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General Assembly Scramble - Ask Questions to Baruch

A BUDGET UPDATE: Thursday, June 30, 2011

The 2011-12 State Budget was formally adopted by both the House and Senate on Wednesday. It is House Bill 1485. The education line items can be found on pages 229 through 240. The spending numbers approved for these line items match the spreadsheet found here (look for the Department of Education pages starting on Line 198).

Bottom line -- Nothing changed in the education budget over the last few days. Neither the House nor the Senate amended the budget bill before the final votes this week. So the ELC analysis, spreadsheet, and other materials remain accurate and may be more informative for you -- click here.

The House and Senate Appropriations Committees have issued spreadsheets showing different ways of looking at the education funding appropriated district-by-district. I find these spreadsheets to hide many important details about the cuts, but you may find it interesting to see how they have chosen to present things. Click on the following links to download the district-by-district spreadsheets from the House and the Senate.

If you have questions, post them here and I will do my best to provide an answer.

ORIGINAL POST:

This is the last week of the 2011-12 session of the General Assembly before taking a summer break. The General Assembly will pass the state budget, cutting funding for public schools. It is also expected to consider and possibly adopt new education reforms, including bills making it harder to raise property taxes and making it easier to lay off teachers. Also on the agenda is major legislation for tuition vouchers and charter school expansion.

WE INVITE YOU TO JOIN IN THE FUN. Ask your questions and express your opinions here on PaSchoolTalk. I will respond as quickly as I can throughout the week.

Thank you for caring about the future of our children, our schools, and our communities.

Tags: Center, Education, Law, Pennsylvania, budget, funding, schools

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Permalink Reply by Baruch Kintisch on June 28, 2011 at 5:50pm

BUDGET UPDATE. ELC has posted the latest education budget information on our website at http://www.elc-pa.org/budget2011.html.

Our analysis emphasizes “per student” calculations, which continue to show huge disparities between high and low poverty districts. The relative size of this disparity has not really changed from Governor Corbett’s original proposal; the amounts restored by the House and in the Final Agreement seem, overall, to have gone to rich and poor alike.

Our spreadsheet also shows that the relatively small amounts per student restored by the House and in the Final Agreement are pretty arbitrary when viewed as the percentage changed compared to the Governor’s original proposal. In other words, rich and poor districts seem to have received similar partial restorations of funding as a percentage of per-student funding.

And Philadelphia seems to have been identified in both the House and the Senate for a bad kind of special treatment – every effort was made to figure out how to increase other districts while leaving out Philly. Duquesne and Chester-Upland are notable for receiving special increases.

Check out the spreadsheet, see how your schools are making out, and talk about it here on PaSchoolTalk.

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Permalink Reply by William Lin on June 29, 2011 at 9:54am

I keep reading in news reports that the voucher bill includes language that would allow parents to send their children to private schools as well as other public schools. Would this include public schools in other districts? How would the logistics of that even work? For example, what would stop wealthier districts from simply opting out of the program, just as most private schools already do in exisiting voucher programs across the country?

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Permalink Reply by Baruch Kintisch on June 29, 2011 at 10:19am

Wednesday will not be a quiet day.

The state budget negotiations are reaching final stages. As of Tuesday evening, the Governor still wants school vouchers as part of the budget deal. Committee and full chamber votes may take place on WEDNESDAY.

We need to pull together more than ever before. Please help us make some calls and do emails. Whatever you can do on Wednesday will be more than appreciated. Up to now, YOUR CALLS AND EMAILS HAVE BEEN HEARD. HOWEVER, A LAST MINUTE MOVE TO ADOPT VOUCHERS IS STILL BEING PLANNED—WE MUST STAY FIRM IN FIGHTING FOR WHAT IS RIGHT FOR ALL KIDS. These proposals aren’t about kids—they are about massive amounts of dollars from our public schools being diverted to private sources that will be accountable to no one. Passing a bill in the Pennsylvania Legislature at this stage of budget negotiations is unacceptable and irresponsible.

Please help us by CALLING AND EMAILING AS EARLY AS POSSIBLY ON WEDNESDAY:

(1) Please call or email Senators first: http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/member_information/s...

(2) Please call or email Members of the House of Representatives next: http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/member_information/r...

The message is simple.
• VOTE NO ON ALL SCHOOL VOUCHER PROPOSALS.
• We do not want a school voucher proposal irresponsibly moved through the legislature and rushed at this time—or any portions of any school voucher proposals. Even if a legislator was inclined to support such a proposal, this is not the time to do this. Remind them of this fact.
• School vouchers are not the answer to what Pennsylvania needs to improve its schools nor are they what taxpayers want.
• Vouchers are unconstitutional, discriminatory, costly, and do nothing to improve public schools.

For more information on vouchers:

Education Law Center: http://www.elc-pa.org/vouchers.html

Pennsylvanians Opposed to Vouchers: http://www.paopposedtovouchers.org/

Thank you in advance for your activism in making sure Pennsylvania’s students are not shortchanged. Please let me know if any of us at the Education Law Center can help you in any way to get these messages across or locate appropriate elected officials. We are a phone call away.

Let us know what we can do to help.

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Permalink Reply by Baruch Kintisch on June 29, 2011 at 10:22am

Good questions, William. Public-to-public transfers are in the voucher bill. I doubt that any school district will use this option. The stronger districts would not be enthusiastic about bringing in struggling students, and the amount of the voucher would not make it worthwhile to do this. Sad.

William Lin said:

I keep reading in news reports that the voucher bill includes language that would allow parents to send their children to private schools as well as other public schools. Would this include public schools in other districts? How would the logistics of that even work? For example, what would stop wealthier districts from simply opting out of the program, just as most private schools already do in exisiting voucher programs across the country?

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Permalink Reply by Baruch Kintisch on June 30, 2011 at 10:26am

A VOUCHER UPDATE. The word on the street is that the General Assembly will not vote on vouchers or charter school expansion until the fall. This could be true, but I would not count on it until all state legislators are safely home for the Fourth of July weekend and the legislature is truly in recess. Representatives and Senators are still hard at work today, voting on budget bills and other things. So anything could happen today or tomorrow (or Saturday if they wanted).

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Permalink Reply by Baruch Kintisch on June 30, 2011 at 10:42am

A BUDGET UPDATE. The 2011-12 State Budget was formally adopted by both the House and Senate on Wednesday. It is House Bill 1485. The education line items can be found on pages 229 through 240. The spending numbers approved for these line items match the spreadsheet found here (look for the Department of Education pages starting on Line 198).

If you have questions, post them here and I will do my best to provide an answer.

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Permalink Reply by Baruch Kintisch on June 30, 2011 at 10:55am

A SCHOOL CODE BILL UPDATE. The annual School Code Bill, House Bill 1352, was adopted on Wednesday in the Senate and will be passed by the House today. No changes were made in the Senate and none are expected in the House.

You can read ELC's summary and analysis as one of the news items on our homepage at http://www.elc-pa.org/index.html.

Bottom line -- the items included in this year’s school code bill do not address the needs of disadvantaged students and their families. The school code bill does include several items that have not been introduced as legislation and have not been approved this year by either the House or Senate. Passing such brand new items in the school code bill is a bad practice, since the public has no opportunity to receive notice of the proposals and provide feedback to their elected officials. Such items should not be approved.

Unfortunately, the changes being adopted as part of the School Code Bill will decrease the training and professional development of teachers, lower the standards for the qualifications needed to become a superintendent or assistant superintendent, and weaken the oversight and accountability functions of the PA Department of Education over school district operations.

Click the link above to read more, and add your comments here on PaSchoolTalk.

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Permalink Reply by Baruch Kintisch on July 1, 2011 at 6:08am

THE CONCLUSION (FOR NOW). The General Assembly finished its business on Thursday night and went home for the summer. For details and links, see the Thursday entries above in this discussion.

The budget and the school code bill were adopted without further changes. No vouchers. No charter school expansion.

Senate Bill 330 was adopted, making it harder for school districts to increase property taxes to pay for extraordinary increases in special education costs, growth in student enrollment, compliance with court orders, and other former exceptions to the Act 1 rules. It makes no sense to ask voters to approve spending money on things that are required by law, such as services for children with disabilities and court orders. But SB 330 will force districts to either cut other programs or ask voters to approve increases for these things. The exception for special education was maintained, but lowered to require a voter referenda in many situations. Read the bill at http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/billinfo/billinfo.cfm?syear=201....