In education, budget cuts must be done with care Intelligencer Journal
Lancaster New Era
Updated Jan 17, 2011 20:40
By JEFF HAWKES, Staff Writer
At an Hourglass Foundation forum on school funding, state Rep. Scott Boyd warned of cuts.
He said Tom Corbett ran for governor on a no-tax-increase pledge and savings will have to come from every department, education included, to close a $4 billion deficit.
"We have a spending problem," the Lampeter Republican said, adding that the mood of the new Republican-controlled Legislature is "enough is enough."
One can just imagine Chinese leaders smiling at the news of a major industrial state deciding that rather than close tax loopholes or tax the Marcellus shale windfall, it's going to invest less in school children.
But if cut and cut some more is to be the new mantra, let's at least be smart about it.
Ways to save
Before schools end up stuffing more kids into a classroom and eliminating AP chemistry, there are other ways to effect savings that the Legislature ought to consider first.
For instance, with 500 school districts in Pennsylvania, including 16 in Lancaster County, wouldn't some consolidation make sense?
And what about a statewide health plan for teachers instead of each district fending for itself? A 2004 study calculated savings approaching $600 million.
And while we're at it, wouldn't regional teacher contracts, or a statewide contract, offer savings and have the added benefit of drawing highly qualified teachers to all parts of the state, not just the better-off suburbs?
All of the above would, of course, require hearings and draw heavy fire. They offer no quick fix to the imperative of balancing the budget by June 30. So with Republicans clamoring for cuts, cuts there will be.
But before the ax is swung, the Philadelphia-based Education Law Center will urge lawmakers to be fair about it, making cuts in a way that does the least harm to school districts with the weakest tax bases and greatest needs.
"It would be very unfair for the schools in Lancaster to have to severely increase class size when other (less distressed) districts won't have to," said Baruch Kintisch, staff attorney for the legal advocacy organization.
How to achieve fairness? Kintisch thinks there are two ways.
Unfair subsidy
First, if there are cuts, they should be run through the funding formula passed in 2008. Weighted to favor districts with weak tax bases and high poverty rates, the formula seeks to put all districts on an equal plane.
Second, aim the greatest cuts at the districts that have received undeserved increases in state funding.
Undeserved? Yes, that's right. There are scores of districts for which lawmakers wrangled so-called "minimum" increases even though the districts might have seen enrollment fall, their tax base strengthen or their poverty rate decline.
According to Education Law Center, 151 school districts last year got a 2-percent increase totaling $19.8 million even though the formula said they should get a smaller increase or no increase. Of those, 32 districts should actually have had state funding cut.
Many districts receive undeserved increases year after year, with the laddering of largess since 2001-02 totaling $384 million.
That's real money — 6.7 percent of total state funding for basic education. And that unearned subsidy is where Kintisch hopes budget cutters give special attention.
The bottom line is we can save money by remedying an unfairness that benefits some districts at the expense of the needy.
In words Republicans will understand: enough is enough.
jhawkes@lnpnews.com
Read more: http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/339030#ixzz1BU5rshc7
Thursday, January 20, 2011
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Consolidating school districts worries me. While there would be monetary savings, I think there would be unintended consequences. Anyone who has ever lived through a merger in the corporate world has experienced it. Often the larger company's policies and procedures are put into place without determining if the smaller company does anything better. A good merger would take the best practices of both entities & use them. That doesn't often happen. My fear is that the needs of the students in a district like Octorara would be trivialized. A larger, more urban school might not see the need for the Ag programs we have. While there initially are savings, quality seems to suffer in the long run. I would hope that "the powers that be" would look long and hard before doing something like consolidating.
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