Washington Court Decisions Light Way to Improved Education Funding

As the Pennsylvania legislature’s failure to pass a governor-approved state budget went deep into its fifth month, politicians hoped the citizenry would remain generally unaware of the strains and hardships their inaction had created. But cries of distress, primarily from social welfare agencies and education leaders, found their way into public consciousness nonetheless.

One of the most embarrassing stories involved a fight that erupted over the disposition of gaming revenue. Without a budget, school districts were not receiving their state education subsidies, forcing some to begin borrowing money in order to keep their classrooms functioning. Under the 1997 charter school law, districts are required to direct a portion of their subsidies to charters that exist in their district. Without the subsidies, neither regular schools nor charters were receiving any state money.

In late October the state’s Department of Education determined that the 1997 law required that charters receive tuition reimbursement from any available state funds, meaning the gaming revenue. School districts immediately protested and state Senate Democrats convinced the state Treasurer to withhold the gaming money from both the districts and the charters. The Pennsylvania School Boards Association filed suit in Commonwealth Court to get the gaming revenue sent directly to school districts.

Charter schools remain controversial in Pennsylvania and around the country, seen by proponents as a means to improve the quality of public education and to offer schooling choices to families regardless of income, and by opponents as drains on financially struggling school districts for the benefit of private entities. Regardless of an individual’s position on such schools, the recent kerfuffle over gaming money highlights an ongoing crisis in the state concerning inadequate and inequitable support of Pennsylvania’s public schools.

Setting aside, for the moment, the lack of a 2016 state budget, recall that the first-year Corbett budget cut classroom funding by close to $860 million, according to the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center (PBPC), and $570 million of those cuts enacted in 2011 are still in place. The primary reason the current governor, Tom Wolf, was elected last year by a margin of 10 percentage points was his pledge to restore that funding to at least 2010 levels. The 2015 budget impasse is basically a fight over the importance politicians place on increased education funding, and just how such an increase should be implemented.

During his campaign, Governor Wolf also called for creation of a formula that would ensure more equitable distribution of state education funds. The PBPC points out that distribution of the 2011-12 funding cuts “were three times larger in high-poverty school districts than in low-poverty ones,” while the smallest share of restored money has gone to the same low-income districts. For example, in Allegheny County the 2015 Mt. Lebanon school district per-student allocation is down $8 from 2010, and South Fayette’s is down $3, while Penn Hills’ is down $446 and McKeesport Area’s is down $466.

It’s likely that if the struggle for shrinking piles of public education funding weren’t so desperate, charter school experimentation wouldn’t be notably controversial. Recent events in Washington state bear out that assertion. In early September that state’s Supreme Court declared charter schools allowed via a narrowly approved 2012 referendum to be unconstitutional. The court’s reasoning was that Washington’s charter schools were not actually public because they were not governed by elected school boards or subject to local accountability.

The Washington state constitution more clearly defines what is meant by a public or “common” school, as they are called there, while the Pennsylvania constitution more vaguely says the General Assembly “shall provide for the maintenance and support of a … system of public education.” Our Auditor General has recommended changes to the 1997 charter school law, including creation of an independent statewide charter school oversight board, a shift of direct payments to cyber schools from school districts to the state, and a requirement that charter schools present annual reports at public meetings. Predictably, the legislature has not acted on any of these proposals.

The larger picture is that Washington’s constitution says its legislature has a “paramount duty” to fund its “common” schools. Consequently, the state’s Supreme Court has been fining its legislature $100,000 a day since mid-August for failing to adequately fund education, with the accrued amount to be included in either a supplemental budget come January, or in the 2017 state budget.

Pennsylvania’s constitution says our legislature is obligated to fund a “thorough and efficient” educational system. Wouldn’t it be great if public outcry and a more active state Supreme Court resulted in hefty fines levied on our legislature for failing to do its constitutionally mandated job and for ignoring the electorate’s clear desire for a substantial increase in school funding?

Neil Cosgrove is a member of the NewPeople editorial collective.

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