Group looks for education funding changes
Donna Cooper ran a large welfare-to-work program that helped 8,000 women get off the welfare rolls and into permanent, full-time employment. The women overcame odds to enter the workplace, but Cooper realized some did not have the basic skills to stay there. They would be the first to go in an economic downturn.
“We were spinning our wheels,” she said of her position as senior vice president of the Philadelphia Workforce Development Corporation.
Cooper said every child, regardless of socioeconomics, deserves the opportunity for a quality education that delivers those basic skills and more. If all schools, rich and poor, had the resources they need for their students to excel, Cooper said she would never again have to run a welfare-to-work program.
Toward that goal, Cooper put her energy into Good Schools Pennsylvania and serves as its campaign director.
Formed 11/2 years ago, Good Schools Pennsylvania is a statewide, non-profit organization working with education, religious and civic organizations to push for education-funding reform.
The organization has attracted a member in the Reaching Educational Achievement with Community Help (REACH) division of Fay-Penn Economic Development Council, based in Uniontown. The two cooperated recently on a panel discussion about school funding reform, held recently at Laurel Highlands Junior High School.
Cooper said education funding reform means more than lowering property taxes and substituting another tax.
Rather, education funding reform is the state taking a larger share of the responsibility for funding schools and dividing the state’s money among the 501 school districts to give them all the same ability to spend so much per student on proven educational programs.
Cooper said Good Schools Pennsylvania is a voice for everyone and anyone who may have no other means of getting their wishes for adequate and equitable school funding to the Legislature.
Good Schools Pennsylvania has an organizational method of forming “groups of 10.” For example, Cooper may speak to a social club within which 10 members get together as a committee to help Good Schools Pennsylvania. Writing letters to legislators is a common activity of these groups of 10.
Good Schools Pennsylvania is gearing up for a concentrated effort in mid-January, when the state Legislature returns to session for the new year.
The Legislature is expected once again to tackle school funding reform.
Proposals have numbered many and died in the past.
Among the failed efforts took place this fall, a special session on school funding reform that Gov. Mark Schweiker called in response to one senator’s special request. Cooper reasoned that the gubernatorial election was not a popular time to tackle the issue with any sincerity. She and others like her say Gov.-elect Ed Rendell has a commitment to this issue and that Rendell’s administration may offer the best chance for school-funding reform.
“What Rendell hopefully will do is reach across the aisle to the Republican leadership in the House and Senate and do that well so we will have bipartisan support and unite in goal and purpose,” she said. “They will do something. Most political analysts say the election was a referendum on education.”
She explained that Rendell, whom she labeled as a bipartisan person, stressed education in his election campaign and now has an obligation to deliver.
“Between his ability to build political allies and what he wants, he might succeed,” she said.
Cooper said Good Schools Pennsylvania will have members present and visible every day of the legislative session, keeping the issue out in the public.
The organization is trying to reach about 5,000 to 6,000 people by the end of January to add to the Good Schools Pennsylvania base of about 10,000 people. She is busy talking to one organization after another and joining in events like the panel discussion held recently in Fayette County.
Lou Anne Caligiuri, field director in the Mon Valley area for Good Schools Pennsylvania, said she has been contacting, in particular, the area’s school superintendents and groups like REACH.
“I think there is a great degree of interest in this area,” Caligiuri said.
Caligiuri is the local link for anyone, group or individual, who would like to get involved.
“We will go and talk where there are people interested. We want to get the message out,” she said.
For more information, call Caligiuri at her office at Penn State McKeesport at 412-675-9025 or call 888-KID-GSPA.
The Good Schools Pennsylvania Web site is www.goodschoolspa.org.