Plan to aim more $ at special student needs

Students enrolled in the Philadelphia School District who are poor, or learning English, or enrolled in special-education classes, or who are mentally gifted, may soon have more tax dollars spent on them.

School-district officials yesterday said that they are in the early stages of creating a "weighted student funding" formula that - if carried out - would shift funding to schools based on student characteristics such as those.

"These situations may cause the need for additional supports for that child in the school setting," said Sandra Dungee Glenn, chairwoman of the School Reform Commission. "If there are additional needs, there should be additional dollars attached to the education of that child."

In recent years, such weighted funding systems have been implemented in a small but growing number of school districts, including those in New York City, Cincinnati, Oakland and Hawaii.

Among those who have endorsed the funding change are three former U.S. secretaries of education, Rod Paige, William J. Bennett and Shirley Hufstedler.

Arlene Ackerman, the Philadelphia School District's incoming chief executive officer, implemented such systems as chief executive officer of the San Francisco and Washington, D.C., school districts, and as deputy superintendent of Seattle's schools.

"The goal is to address how a school district allocates its fiscal dollars so that it's fair, equitable and transparent," said Ackerman, who expects to begin her job next month. "So that if a child is bilingual, the money follows the child. . . . It's just leveling the playing field."

"A student with less weights will need less resources," said Ross Wiener, a vice president at Education Trust, a Washington-based nonprofit that advocates for poor and minority public school children. "Setting those weights is a political decision and people need to understand that and be involved."

Nothing is expected to change anytime soon. Ackerman said it took about a year and a half to create the system in San Francisco. Dungee Glenn said she suspects it will take more than a year to create a system here in Philadelphia

"We're just starting the process," she said. "It's something that we have to do carefully. Could we undertake a pilot [program] in the next year or so? It's possible."

Still, some education advocates have already indicated that they are leaning against a weighted funding system.

"What they're going to be doing, basically, is robbing Peter to pay Paul," said Greg Wade, president of the Philadelphia Home and School Council.

"It sounds great to say we're taking care of the needier schools," he said. "But you're going to be bringing down other schools that won't have the money to do their programs."

"I'm not a huge fan of the notion that the money follows the kid," said Helen Gym, a founding member of Parents United for Public Education. "It sounds good, but it's not effective in practice.

"We need to do some serious studies on what it looks like in practice," she added. "The problem is, in a school district like Philadelphia that is underfunded by one billion dollars, where is this money coming from?"

Shelly Yanoff, executive director of Public Citizens for Children and Youth, agreed that the school district must get an overall boost in funding to make a weighted funding system workable.

"The devil is always in the details, but it feels as if it would give kids that need the most support, the most support," she said. "It feels like it would be more responsive to children's needs."

Ackerman said that before implementing a weighted-funding system in Washington - where she served from 1997 to 2000 - she discovered student funding disparities as large as $4,000 a child.

The first step in creating a new funding system in Philadelphia, she said, is underway. Education Resource Strategies, a nonprofit organization in Watertown, Mass., is studying how the district spends its money - including at the school and pupil levels.

Next, Ackerman said, a committee of teachers, parents and other stakeholders will help develop a methodology for assigning weights to student financial needs before more community input is sought, revisions are made and the reform commission gives its final approval.

"That's the process that I used in all three cities," she said. "It's a good process because it involves people in an authentic way." *