Sep 9, 2002 By Timothy Potts 2 min read

Affordability Long-Term Local Tax Cuts

Local Control

Do It Right, But Not Now

You can’t do it right unless you do it now. Doing it later is doing it wrong. We’ve been doing it later for generations of school children, and we can say conclusively that waiting doesn’t work for children.

There are 70-some reform bills in the General Assembly. The best of the bunch is Micozzie’s Successful Schools Budget. It’s based in reality. It provides adequate funding, equitably distributed, with tough accountability requirements that ensure higher student learning and severe consequences for schools, teachers, and students who fail persistently.

Still the governor says we can’t do such important work in an election year. Frankly, there’s something perverse about the notion that the closer lawmakers get to judgment day the more we should let them sin with impunity. Does life work that way for you?

Lawmakers are not lacking proposals to choose from. What’s lacking is the political will to do what most other states have already done. That’s what we count on a governor to provide – the leadership that galvanizes political will.

Now that I think about it, I guess Gov. Schweiker is right. We probably will have to wait for another governor.

Timothy Potts is director of the Pennsylvania School Reform Network.