To: The Pennsylvania State House, The Pennsylvania State Senate, and Governor Tom Wolf
Pennsylvania Petition for a State-wide Education Funding Formula based on the Principles of equit...
Pennsylvania is among the bottom five in the nation regarding funding public schools in a constitutionally equitable manner. We request that Pennsylvania lawmakers introduce legislation that seeks to meet the goals of equity, adequacy, predictability and fairness for education funding policy.
Why is this important?
Act 31 of 1983 ended our state's 50% reimbursement guarantee of local school funding. Every year since has seen a reduction of state funds going to local school districts. Currently, Pennsylvania only funds 36% of local education expenditures--ranking near the bottom as 45th in the nation for low state funding.
The Pennsylvania legislature has shifted the burden of financing PreK-12 education onto local property owners. The local property owners in Pennsylvania, people like you and me, pay over 45% of education costs compared to an average of just 29% in other states.
The Pennsylvania legislature, since 1999, has also failed to fund $29 BILLION in pension obligations while local school districts and school employees have continuously made the required contributions. Now the legislature is trying to shift the burden of these unfunded obligations onto the local taxpayers. This is unacceptable. New funding sources need to be accessed to rectify this issue.
We believe that the Costing Out Study of 2006 was a move in the right direction toward adequacy because it determined the base cost of educating a student to meet state education standards. And now that the state is the prime determiner of educational adequacy, they should be the prime funder of education.
We believe that the Funding Formula of 2008-2011 was a step in the right direction for allocating funds to School Districts with equity. It would make sense for the state to continue in that route by developing a method for FAIRLY allocating funds to districts based on an equalized local effort and not on the lop-sided local spending formulas and political vote-swapping in use today.
The Pennsylvania legislature has shifted the burden of financing PreK-12 education onto local property owners. The local property owners in Pennsylvania, people like you and me, pay over 45% of education costs compared to an average of just 29% in other states.
The Pennsylvania legislature, since 1999, has also failed to fund $29 BILLION in pension obligations while local school districts and school employees have continuously made the required contributions. Now the legislature is trying to shift the burden of these unfunded obligations onto the local taxpayers. This is unacceptable. New funding sources need to be accessed to rectify this issue.
We believe that the Costing Out Study of 2006 was a move in the right direction toward adequacy because it determined the base cost of educating a student to meet state education standards. And now that the state is the prime determiner of educational adequacy, they should be the prime funder of education.
We believe that the Funding Formula of 2008-2011 was a step in the right direction for allocating funds to School Districts with equity. It would make sense for the state to continue in that route by developing a method for FAIRLY allocating funds to districts based on an equalized local effort and not on the lop-sided local spending formulas and political vote-swapping in use today.