Lawmakers hear concerns for funding growing school districts
HARRISBURG – One Montgomery County school district superintendent compared the way the state funds education, particularly when dealing with growing school districts, to “pinning a tail on a donkey.” By that he means, the way the money lands makes no sense.
“It’s not a system at all,” said Jeffrey Miller, Methacton School District superintendent. “It’s a bunch of supplements.”
That’s not precisely true because Pennsylvania drives out basic education subsidies to all 501 school districts based on a formula that takes into account wealth, tax effort, size and English language proficiency.
But Miller was reacting to a deepening concern among public officials and lawmakers about the growing disparity in education funding that results in stagnant or declining school districts getting greater per pupil funding than burgeoning districts made so by heavy development.
As an example, consider that Bucks County’s Central Bucks School District – with a 43 percent growth between 1995 and 2005 – got $697 per student in state spending this year. That, while Harmony School District in Clearfield County dropped 25 percent in student population and received $6,852 per student this year, according to a Legislative Budget and Finance Committee Report.
At the first of a two-day hearing Monday, lawmakers on the House Republican Policy Committee quizzed officials from growing school districts on how the state’s system of funding education is impacting school budgets and property taxes.
The goal of the hearings is to help draft legislation that could be introduced as early as this year in the budget process.
The problem for growing school districts stems from the fact that the state largely curbed its basic education funding formula to 1991 student population levels. And the flow of state education funding, like funding for many other public services, is impacted by a “hold-harmless” clause that says no district can receive less funding in actual dollar amounts than the year before.
These two factors have resulted in high growth districts getting little increase, and sometimes even a decline, in the state’s per student contribution over the last 15 years.
School officials complain that the state funding shortfall comes at a time when they need the money most to build new classrooms, add support staff and extra buses and drivers. They say they’ve been increasingly turning to property taxpayers to make up the difference.
“Additional student enrollment requires an increase in local school expenditures,” said Charles Amuso, superintendent of Soudertown Area School District in Montgomery County. “The result is that a greater burden is placed on those who pay real estate taxes in our district.”
House Republicans are hoping to address extra funding for high growth school districts in the ongoing debate over property tax reform, although the details of such a plan have not been made public.
Additionally, the House overwhelmingly passed an amendment in its version of the state budget last week to require that school districts receive funding for every new student at the rate of the prior year’s per student state funding amount.
Some say the newfound legislative support is the result of new areas of the state becoming high growth centers. Now joining the Philadelphia suburbs in high growth are York County, Lancaster, the Poconos area, and the Lehigh Valley.
“I think we have a lot more advantage than we did a couple years ago,” said Montgomery County Rep. Robert Godshall.
Still, ideas like York County Rep. Ron Miller’s budget amendment to fund growth were given tepid review by the two Montgomery County superintendents. Methacton’s Jeffrey Miller said it “slows the bleeding.” What he’d really like, he said, is a return to something similar to the pre-1991 funding formula, where school districts could reliably expect the state to pay 50 percent of the funding.
Methacton currently gets closer to 32 percent, according to figures he provided.
Alison Hawkes can be reached at 717-705-6330 or ahawkes@calkins-media.com.