State, not schools, creates tax problem
Some people really don’t want you to think for yourself; they’re happy to do that for you. In trying to make a convincing argument, they attempt to lure you into accepting certain assumptions, despite compelling evidence to the contrary. The current debate about whether the public should have the right to vote on school budgets provides an excellent case study. Advocates of referendum seek to gain support for their position by relying on badly outdated notions of runaway teacher salaries and school budgets. They expect the public to accept these statements without question. The only way supporters of referendum can make their case appears to be through manipulation of data, since the facts concerning school budgets do not help them.
Let’s begin with the contention that teacher salaries are out of control. Many will remember the mid- to late-1980s when school collective bargaining typically produced double-digit contract settlements. The Pennsylvania School Boards Association led a lengthy but ultimately successful effort to change the public sector labor law, in order to produce a level playing field in school negotiations. Act 88 of 1992 achieved many of PSBA’s objectives, including a tightly defined period for bargaining, mandatory fact-finding and limitations on the number and duration of strikes, to cite just a few of the law’s provisions.
School boards have effectively used the new bargaining tools created by Act 88 to ensure contract settlements are in line with a community’s ability to pay. Data from the state Department of Education confirms that, over the past 10 years, teacher salaries have risen by an average of 2.7 percent annually, mirroring almost exactly the average increase in the Consumer Price Index during the period (2.6 percent). Supporters of referendum conveniently ignore this fact. Instead, they try to demonstrate that teacher pay is growing at an alarming rate by reaching back almost two decades to find data that supports their case. That’s disingenuous, to say the least.
These persons employ the same strategy when it comes to arguing that overall school budgets are growing too quickly. Here, again, their baseline begins in the years when teacher salaries – the single largest item in any school budget – were rising quickly. Let’s look at recent school budgets. For the past seven years, school district expenditures have grown by a little more than 36 percent. By way of comparison, that actually is less than the rate of growth in state government budgets over the same period, which is nearly 38 percent.
The bottom line: school spending and teacher salaries are being controlled. That is not to say that property taxes are too low, however. Although Pennsylvania school spending is comparable to, or in some cases lower than, that of surrounding states, the commonwealth relies more heavily on property taxes to fund education. Why? In short, a steady decline in the share of school costs paid by state government has shifted a growing burden onto the local tax base. Today, on average statewide, school boards raise nearly 65 cents of every instructional dollar – mostly from property taxes.
Compounding the problem is the escalating impact of special education on school budgets. This vital program increasingly has become the financial responsibility of school districts, rather than of the state and federal governments that created it. Recently, a school board member told me that his small, rural school district is paying $475,000 a year for the education of two children with special needs. More than a decade ago, virtually all of that cost would have been paid by state government. Today, only a fraction of it is being reimbursed. His story hardly is unique; it reflects the experience of school districts of all sizes and descriptions across the state.
Some contend the rising cost of special education is attributable to over-identification of students with disabilities by school personnel. A few years ago, the state commissioned a study to prove that hypothesis. Its researchers concluded that incidence rates of students in special education are not related to the actions of school officials in screening students for the program. In other words, school districts are doing their jobs, but the state is not paying its fair share of the costs.
Special education reflects a larger, growing trend. Over the course of many years, the state and federal governments have imposed far more obligations on school districts than they have provided money to pay for them. Some like special education impose huge costs; others carry smaller price tags, but the cumulative impact is staggering. School boards have been required to find the dollars to fund these mandates, many of which have nothing to do with the core academic program and virtually none of which ever is evaluated as to its effectiveness. When real estate millage rates go up to pay for all these new expenses, some critics conveniently ignore the pressures on local budgets and simply accuse school boards of spending too much. In truth, property taxes are just a symptom of an underlying problem – one consisting of inadequate state funding and too many mandated costs. Both issues urgently need to be addressed.
Public schools have worked to keep costs in line, but they need help. State government must develop a new partnership with school boards in funding programs to support the education of children – not dodge the problem by enacting referendum on school budgets.
Thomas J. Gentzel is the executive director of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association.