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Big gap

4 min read

To the absolute surprise of no one paying close attention to the funding of Pennsylvania’s public schools, a recent study by the Associated Press showed that the gap between what wealthy districts and poor districts spend to educate their children has widened dramatically in the four years since Gov. Tom Corbett took office.

Back then, Corbett contended that President Obama’s stimulus funds had expired and education cuts were necessary to balance the budget.

However, the result was that since Pennsylvania’s school districts rely mainly on property taxes, poorer school districts lacked the resources to make up the difference in cuts as wealthier school districts were able to do.

According to the Associated Press story, school year, districts in the top half of average resident income are budgeted to spend nearly $1,800 more per student than the poorest half of districts. That’s a 140 percent increase in the size of the gap, or about $1,060 more per student, since the 2010-11 school year, according to the AP’s analysis.

The gap is even wider when considering districts on the farther ends of the income spectrum.

Districts in the top 20 percent of average resident income are budgeted to spend slightly more than $4,000 more per student this year than the poorest 20 percent of districts. That’s a 130 percent increase, or about $2,300 more per student, in the past four years.

Unfortunately, most of our local school districts fall among the poorest in the state and thus have been forced to cut spending on a number of programs. The consequence is that our students aren’t getting the type of education that students in wealthier school districts are receiving.

“They can’t make up the difference” from their tax base, said Jim Buckheit of the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators. “As these cuts went into place, the only options the (poorer) districts had was to cut.”

The inferior education being provided to students as a result might be at least one reason so many are failing to pass assessment and graduation exams. Better-paying jobs will be out of their reach when they become adults, which will ultimately have a negative impact on the area’s economy.

It’s called being penalized because of your zip code, and it has been a fact of life in Fayette County for a long time.

The Rendell administration back in 2011 had a plan to equalize funding, using things such as income and the number of special education students. However, that plan was quickly abandoned by Corbett who maintained it wasn’t how much was spent on education as much as how it was spent.

The AP added that the state’s contribution to public schools has fallen from 50 percent in 1975 to about 34 percent currently, according to an Education Law Center study conducted by Penn State researchers.

Corbett had admitted to seeing a problem with the growing disparity, and he signed legislation last year authorizing a commission to study the issue. The panel has been holding hearings across the state and is expected to release a report in the spring.

Coming up with a solution will be far from easy. Some experts contend that closing the gap between the rich and the poor could require an additional $1.5 billion for schools in the bottom half of income.

Gov.-Elect Tom Wolf campaigned on his plan to tax Marcellus shale as a way to raise money for education, and it seemed to be popular with most commonwealth residents.

But at the same time, Pennsylvania voters also elected an overwhelming number of Republican lawmakers who mostly oppose the tax. So, how this is all going to work out is anyone’s guess. But everyone should be able to agree that a major problem exists in how we fund the education of our students, and something needs to be done to fix it.

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