In response to a press release issued by state Sen. David G. Argall, R-29, on Tuesday, the governor’s press secretary said Wednesday every public school district in the state will receive more funding under the governor’s funding formula than they had in 2014-15.
“Governor (Tom) Wolf has been pushing for a fair funding formula to end Pennsylvania’s inequitable distribution of education dollars, one of the most inequitable in the country. The new fair funding formula, which again, he supports and begins to implement in the current distribution of funding, cannot truly be fair unless the cuts are fully restored,” Jeffrey Sheridan, the governor’s press secretary, said in a statement to the newspaper Wednesday.
Sheridan urged the public to read the governor’s April 5 announcement regarding education funding, which has been posted on his website, www.governor.pa.gov.
“Under the governor’s restoration formula, every single school district in Schuylkill County, and every district in the commonwealth receives more than they received in 2014-15. Under the governor’s distribution, the combined increase for all districts in Schuylkill County is nearly $1.9 million. But the amount of total funding in the Republican budget is only half of what the governor proposed in his original budget, and $177 million less in basic education funding than what was included in the bipartisan budget that Republicans jettisoned before the New Year,” Sheridan said.
“It is important to note that with the governor’s distribution, every district in Schuylkill County is more than 91 percent restored from the 2010-11 cuts. Currently, only 4 percent of districts in Pennsylvania have seen their funding fully restored to 2010-11 levels and the commonwealth is currently over $370 million short from fully restoring the cuts,” Sheridan said.
“For Republicans to push around their plan in comparison to the governor’s plan, and compare dollar amounts, conveniently ignores the reality of the devastation they were complicit in causing five years ago when $1 billion was cut from education disproportionately affecting the poorest school districts. Many of the poorest districts have not had their funding restored. In fact, the Republican plan would have taken money back that has already been allocated from some of the poorest districts,” Sheridan said.
After reading the statement from Sheridan on Wednesday, Argall released the following statement:
“The governor’s veto earlier this month coupled with his new education funding formula took over $7.6 million away from Schuylkill County public schools. I supported this latest measure to keep more taxpayer money in Schuylkill County rather than send it to Philadelphia, which is what the governor is attempting to do.”
“As for the governor’s office, they are using a lot of smoke and mirrors in their response. The fact remains that only one person actually affixed their name to document that cut money for schools this year — that was Governor Wolf with his veto pen,” Jennifer Kocher, press secretary for the Senate Republican Caucus, said Wednesday
“The governor and his staff continue to dwell on the ‘what ifs’ of a budget. The fact is that his budget required massive tax increases before his total $400 million package could be adopted. His tax package failed to garner a single vote in favor of it. Senator Argall did vote for a budget that contained a $350 million increase in funding. The measure failed in the House. Why? Because, again, it stops with the governor. The governor failed to show any leadership and failed to garner enough votes from his own party to support the Republicans in the House who were willing to vote for that plan. So for all of the what ifs in the world, the fact remains that the governor can only spend the money he has — no more what ifs. The increase was for $200 million in new money. The governor then picked winners and losers when it came to state funding for schools. And your local schools are clearly losing,” Kocher said.
“The governor’s office continues to mislead about the facts on school funding. The fact is that state funding for education in Pennsylvania has increased nearly $1.5 billion since 2008-09 when state funding totaled $8.6 billion, and it has risen to over $10.7 billion dollars today. In that time frame, the one-time money from the federal government totaling almost $1 billion went away. State monies were never cut, but we also did not raise your taxes in order to make up for a $1 billion shortfall in federal dollars. Even with the stimulus money, the budget passed by the General Assembly and allowed to become law by the governor contains more money than ever for education in Pennsylvania,” Kocher said.
In his statement, Sheridan also made other comments regarding Republicans in the legislature.
“If Republicans in the legislature had supported Governor Wolf’s 2015-16 budget proposal — instead of continuing the status quo of underfunding schools and passing tax burdens onto local homeowners — there would have been $200 million more for education than in the Republican budget. For all of the school districts in Schuylkill County, Republicans cut more than $2.1 million in basic education funding from the governor’s proposal,” Sheridan said.
“As the governor made clear when he announced his formula, since day one, he has been fighting for historic investments in education at all levels, including K through 12 basic education, to restore the devastating cuts that forced educator layoffs, increased class sizes, program cuts, and soaring property taxes,” Sheridan said.
“As a result of the Republican cuts that Senator Argall supported, Schuylkill County districts were forced to lay off the following total personnel over the last five years (source: Pennsylvania Department of Education),” Sheridan said. And he presented the list of districts and the number of layoffs:
Blue Mountain, 359; Mahanoy Area, 191; Minersville Area, 178; North Schuylkill, 270; Panther Valley, 189;
Pine Grove Area, 239; Pottsville Area, 447; Saint Clair Area, 68; Schuylkill Haven Area, 205; Shenandoah Valley, 156; Tamaqua Area, 250; and Tri-Valley, 132.
“Total in Schuylkill County: 2,684,” Sheridan said.
In response, Kocher said, “We have seen this information, but to date have been unable to verify or get a source for it. We do not know if it includes positions lost to attrition or how the fact that school populations in different areas have been decreasing over recent years. So in short, we question the validity of it.”