Letters: Reinstate school funding formula
It's good to see Rep. John Taylor engaged in the school funding discussion, in his Oct. 25 letter.
IT'S GOOD to see Rep. John Taylor engaged in the school-funding discussion in his Oct. 25 letter. We need the entire Philadelphia delegation working on this issue in Harrisburg.
It is important, though, to clarify some of Rep. Taylor's points.
Rep. Taylor is correct in saying that a school-funding formula was enacted under Gov. Ed Rendell. However, that formula was not used to calculate the state funding cuts in 2011 and it was ultimately amended out of law in 2012.
So, Gov. Corbett has not been using a funding formula.
Now, let's look at the numbers.
The School District of Philadelphia received, as Rep. Taylor notes, $1,072,038,281 in Basic Education Funding (BEF) in 2010-11. The BEF line item for the district in 2013-14 was, as Rep. Taylor notes, $983,928,923.
That's $88.1 million less.
Combine that reduction with the state block-grant cuts of approximately $200 million for tutoring programs and charter-school reimbursements, and Philadelphia faces a gap of nearly $300 million.
In many communities throughout the state, including Philadelphia, the local schools serve higher numbers of students in poverty, students learning English, students with a disability and students in charter schools than the schools in other communities.
Those same communities are often economically disadvantaged and, despite local effort, lack the overall economic ability to raise adequate revenue to fund their schools. In those instances, the state must play a greater role to provide support to the schools in those communities.
That was the point of the funding formula. The General Assembly recognized that different types of students required different levels of resources, and that different types of communities required different levels of state investment. A fair, accurate and transparent school-funding formula allowed the state to distribute dollars based on those differences.
The state should return to that model.
Brett Schaeffer
Communications Director
Education Law Center
Philadelphia