County-college funding divides Pa. towns

In Delaware County, residents of the Chester Upland School District - one of Pennsylvania's poorest and most academically challenged - pay more than $5,400 annually to attend their county community college full time.

In the same county, residents of the Radnor Township School District - one of the richest in the state - pay only $3,160 to attend the same college.

That harsh irony is rooted in a decades-old community-college funding system that education officials agree is badly broken, but that no one seems to know how to fix.

Residents of school districts that paid to build the college in 1967 and contribute annually to its operation are charged half the tuition of those in districts that do not sponsor it.

"It's difficult. It's complicated. There's no easy answer," said Delaware County Community College president Jerry Parker, who has worked at the school for 31 years and has heard complaints about the system for that time. "There are always districts thinking about wanting to get in or wanting to get out."

Adding to the irony, few students in Radnor use the college. Only 13 members of the Class of 2008 attended, yet the district had to pay nearly $1.3 million to the college as one of 11 sponsoring districts.

So Radnor isn't happy with the arrangement, either.

"We would like to see a more equitable distribution of cost across all districts. Students then would all be treated fairly," said Patricia Booker, a Radnor school board member. "It's time for us to rethink the formula across the board."

Gregory Thornton, superintendent of Chester Upland, which is under state control, put the issue front and center recently by asking Parker to estimate how much becoming a sponsor would cost Chester Upland.

"I've got to attack this. I've got to attack it hard," he said. "I can't think of a place more needy and more deserving of a public education than the community of Chester."

State Sen. Dominic Pileggi (R., Delaware), who lives in the Chester Upland district, said the issue also was on his radar.

"Most of this is an accident of history," said Pileggi, whose daughter pays the higher tuition to attend the college. "We really need to find a way to level the playing field so those decisions made a generation ago don't impact students for the rest of time in the amount of tuition they pay for the community college."

Parker said he would raise the issue with liaisons from the sponsoring districts this month.

Pennsylvania has 14 community colleges. Ten are sponsored by their counties, which made the initial capital investment to set them up and continue to contribute annually toward their operation. The other four, including Delaware County's, are sponsored by school districts.

In Pennsylvania, many communities do not sponsor community colleges, so their students pay higher rates to attend if one is nearby. About 420,000 students statewide are enrolled in credit and non-credit community-college programs.

When the Delaware County college was formed, not all the districts wanted to spend the money to become a sponsor. Today, nine of the county's 15 districts are full sponsors, while two others that have consolidated since 1967 - Garnet Valley and Wallingford-Swarthmore - include some communities that are sponsors and others that are not.

Yet another irony is that the college is situated in the Marple-Newtown School District, which is not a sponsor.

Students in sponsoring areas pay $90 per credit; those outside pay $180. A full-time load is 24 credits annually. About 40 percent of the college's 27,179 students (both credit and noncredit) come from non-sponsoring districts - not only in Delaware County but also in Chester County, which doesn't have a community college.

Sponsoring districts annually pay a percentage of the market value of their property. Richer districts, such as Radnor, pay more.

Collectively, sponsoring districts will kick in $6.2 million, or 9 percent, of the college's budget next year. An additional 30 percent comes from the state, 57 percent from tuition, and the rest from other areas.

Booker, of Radnor, said the board over the years had looked at withdrawing from sponsorship. She said she would welcome other sponsor districts if they would alleviate the load in Radnor.

The Radnor board is grappling with how to cut $1.25 million from its budget.

"It becomes very difficult as a school director to justify sending money to the community college when we're cutting services to students in our own community," Booker said.

Parker, the college's president, took exception to Radnor's assertion that only 13 of last year's graduates used the school this year. He said there were 493 credit and noncredit students from Radnor last year; they just weren't all from the Class of 2008.

Countered Booker: "Students under the age of 21 - that's our obligation." It's not fair to count adult learners, she said.

In Chester Upland, the concerns are different.

Thornton, the superintendent, said students had told him that they couldn't afford the more costly tuition. The district wants to alleviate their load, he said, but he's not sure how much the district could afford to pay to sponsor the college.

"As tight as our budgets are, it's going to be difficult," Thornton said.

Parker said Chester Upland's portion would amount to about $245,000 for 2009-10. But that wouldn't include a one-time payment to "buy in." That figure has not been calculated, Parker said, but likely would be hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Parker pointed out that eligible Chester Upland students could get state and federal grants to cover the higher tuition.

"We work very hard to make sure students get all the help they need in terms of filling out the form," he said.

Options for solving the problem vary, and Parker said all of them had hurdles.

The burden could be shifted entirely to the college's students, and no entity would sponsor. That would become more problematic for students from poorer districts, such as Chester Upland.

"You just compound the problem," Parker said.

Or the county could become the sole sponsor, but who or what would mandate it? How much would districts or communities that hadn't been sponsors have to pay to join? And would the amount collected from the additional sponsors cover the loss of students who pay double tuition?

A third way would be for all districts that use the college to sponsor it, but that would pose similar problems. And it likely would face opposition at a time when districts are looking to cut costs.

"It could be quite an expensive proposition to join," Marple-Newtown Superintendent Merle Horowitz said.

The issue has confounded the Delaware County Community College board, too. Some believe the state should step in, one member said.

"Some of our board members have a very strong commitment to the idea of having supporting school districts, and the legislation requires us to have them," said member Corrinne A. Caldwell, who is also on the State Board of Education. "Others would say that we need to figure out a way to have greater state equalization of support to community colleges, and that we can't logically expect school districts at this stage to assume any additional costs."

Diane Bosak, executive director of the Pennsylvania Commission for Community Colleges, said the state should be asked to address the problem.

But she added, "In these tight fiscal times, it's not a conversation to have."