I’ve been spending a lot of time recently dealing with education funding.
Maybe you noticed there has been a bit of an upheaval in Upper Darby. When administrators - swimming in about $4 million in red ink - decided to make some painful cuts, including slashing key elements of the district’s beloved arts and music programs, the public rose up and voiced a resounding, “Enough.”
The din was so loud that it was heard in Harrisburg. Additional funding was found, a lot of laid-off teachers are being rehired and the slashed programs are being restored.
Not all districts are that lucky.
Take William Penn for instance.
They faced a similar problem. But in what was called a “gut-wrenching” decision that moved at least one board member to tears, the school board rejected a tax hike and instead will go about the grim task of trying to cut even more from their bare-bones spending plan.
They will meet on July 23 to do just that.
I’ve been talking to people in this county about education funding, its reliance on property taxes, and the “uneven playing field” it creates for longer than I care to admit.
State Rep. Nick Micozzie, R-163, has long been tilting at windmills in Harrisburg in his efforts to get the system changed.
He even came up with his own plan. He called it the Successful Schools Plan. It made a lot of sense, but it had one fatal flaw. It was based on something that is never going to happen.
That is that some more well-to-do districts would have to come to grips with the fact that they are not going to get as much funding from Harrisburg as other more needy districts.
That doesn’t make for a lot of smiles and pats on the back from people who have to run for their job every two years. Not one member of the Delco delegation would support Micozzie’s plan, which died the same death as so many other education funding reforms.
A few years ago, a costing-out study was done on the system, and from it came some changes in the way the money is doled out. Clearly it is still not enough.
William Penn School District is proof of that.
I wrote about it in my weekly column. You can check it out here.
It moved one person who deals with education funding in the county to label the system as “Jim Crow in disguise.” Anyone care to argue that point?
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