By Charles Ballard, President, East Penn School Board
In confidence games, like Three Card Monte, and magic tricks, misdirection is the key to fooling the audience. If you can get people looking at the wrong place at the right time, you can slip something past them. The Governor’s latest budget for education is a case of the use of this old technique by a politician.
In the past, there were several different line items of state payment to school districts that covered widely different things, like the basic education subsidy (supposedly the state’s share of the cost of education), payment of half of the social security tax on district employee wages, the state share of PSERS (the state-mandated retirement program), and state partial reimbursement for transportation costs of public and non-public school students, for example. None of these costs are really linked to each other, as they are for really separate items, and go up by different rates every year. Each was treated separately in the old education budgets.
All of a sudden, in the new budget, several of these payments are "bundled" into something called a "Block Grant," along with the basic education subsidy, that is, one lump sum of money with no differentiation on the various payments put into it. The misdirection starts with the Governor’s claim that the purpose for this is to make it "easier" for the school districts to "reallocate the funds." At the same time, the claim is made that he is "increasing the funding for education." Hey, where did that card go…….?
All of this is intended to fool the public, both now and later. The now part is that the Governor is claiming he is increasing funds to K-12 education. He is actually proposing a small increase to the basic education subsidy, which is part of the new block grant, but at the same time he is cancelling another block grant program for $95 million that schools received for things like all-day kindergarten and remediation of students from low-income families. Net effect, he is cutting education funding AGAIN. $700 million wasn’t enough for him last year, apparently.
The later part is in the bundling of several payments into the one Block Grant sack, so you can’t see the pig in the poke. With this approach, the Governor will be able to raise the block grant amount a small amount to claim that he is again "increasing the amount spent on education," but not have to explain that he is actually cutting education again because the amounts for the other bundled programs aren’t going up enough to cover the cost increases in those programs. Not only do taxpayers not get to look in the poke, they can’t even squeeze it to tell what’s all in there.
Then, school districts will have to decide which program to "short" because the total doesn’t cover all the costs associated with the bundled programs. That’s the "flexibility" the Governor is giving us.
Hey, this is all part of the show. When you are bamboozled and distracted enough by his slight of hand, he wants to send your tax dollars to private and religious schools in the form of vouchers, without requiring any accounting for the money spent, or requiring those schools getting your dollars to take the PSSA or Keystone tests to prove that they are effectively using those dollars.
Maybe after the show, you will want to buy some of his Marcellus Shale Snake Oil, guaranteed to convince you that an impact fee isn’t a tax, so that he can claim he didn’t raise taxes at the same time he is "increasing" the amount the state spends on education, right?
Maybe it would be a good thing for you to let the Governor and your local legislators know what you think of this show. Before they ride out of town on their medicine show wagon with your money.
is the President of the , but this opinion is his own personal opinion, and does not necessarily represent that of the Board or the School District.
another example of hidden fees for homeowners........they like to sneak these things in, see Mr. Ballard, this is nothing new
This district is spending less money in the present budget as opposed to last year despite resing costs and falling revenues. That is not easy to do.
A development similar to Annandale (this according to bus drivers though I would love to get harder figures) would add 700 more students to the rolls of the school district. This coupled with other projects in the pipeline or being discussed now. (Allen organ rezoning from commercial to High Density ect. ect.) You want to reign in school taxes? STOP GROWTH NOW in the township. www.facebook.com/friendslmt
For the real data, see the district's budget at their website: http://www.eastpennsd.org/Budget/_docs/generalfundbudget2012.pdf . 09-10 state funding to EPSD was $21.77 million and 11-12 funding to EPSD was $23.10 million, $1.33 million or over 6% more. The year in between had even more money, but that was from unsustainable one time Federal stimulus money that was funnelled through the state as a conduit. Unfortunately, an opposite impression has been created by statements from other sources, some official and some not. One example is the patch article titled "East Penn Could Lose $4,827,864 for Education" and subtitled "Governor’s proposed budget sets state contributions back to 2008-2009 levels." at http://emmaus.patch.com/articles/east-penn-could-lose-4827864-for-education. Neither of these statements are true. Clearly, from the data in the budget, EPSD gained $1.3 million or 6% more state funding over the last two budget years. State support for education is EPSD has been steadily growing and the sky isn't falling.
These existing programs did not receive any funding in Corbett’s plan: * Accountability Block Grants (cutting $259 million) * Educational Assistance Program (cutting $6.9 million) * Reimbursement of Charter Schools (cutting $224 million) * School Improvement Grants (cutting $10.7 million) * Science: It’s Elementary (cutting $1.6 million) * Mobile Science Education Program (cutting $14.3 million) * Dual Enrollment Programs (cutting $6.9 million) * High School Reform (cutting $1.7 million) * Intermediate Units (cutting $4.7 million) It's more than just the basic education subsidy. For example, cutting the charter school reimbursment was huge for East Penn. http://www.eastpennsd.org/Administration/_docs/FAQs.pdf - helpful in understanding what happened last year
I won't comment on the numbers you cite because they are statewide and don't apply to EPSD, which is what my comment was about. Even if there were cuts, it wouldn't matter because programs are always changing and some old ones need to be replaced with better stuff. And it certain that any "cuts" were replaced with "adds" since the grand total of state funding for EPSD went up!
overall state sources 2011-2012 $23,103,450 source East Penn School District Budget http://www.eastpennsd.org/Administration/_docs/generalfundbudget2012.pdf
But the fact remains: "09-10 state funding to EPSD was $21.77 million and 11-12 funding to EPSD was $23.10 million, $1.33 million or over 6% more". That's all past. Time will tell what the future brings.
Also, the federal stimulus money was substituted by the state for some of funds they would have otherwise had to pay the district and so the 'unsustainable' is not accurate either. The state balanced their budget with the federal stimulus money. Not all of it was 'extra' and thus 'unsustainable".
With regard to your second paragraph, I agree with you that the state balanced their budget with stimulus money to make up moneys they didn’t have, while you seem to agree with me that there was some ‘extra’ money beyond that was essentially passed to school districts to make up for other (non-state) revenues they lost. And that is my point for comparing 09-10 with 11-12 in my original posting: 2010-2011 is so weird, that it is difficult to interpret its numbers, because of the ostensible spike in state funding. Both budget numbers and actual numbers 10-11 are an anomaly and are outlying data points. Indeed, you should reserve some of your criticism to “Truth Seeker” who introduced the 10-11 BUDGET numbers into the discussion when much more accurate ACTUAL numbers for that year are available in the recent bond statements. BTW, those documents show a 20% increase in total state funding over the last 5 years for which there is ACTUAL data.
Artie & Black Sheep, it is Gov Corbett you should direct your anger toward, not the school boards which are just trying to keep their heads above water. The governor is pushing cuts to education funding for a second year in a row, while simultaneously working to divert $Ms to vouchers & charter schools--I agree with manfromuncle & srodham69 wholeheartedly, these ventures are huge scams and breeders of corruption that are stealing $Ms from taxpayers and putting it in the hands of those smart enough to take advantage of a subpar funding system. Gov Corbett's latest plan is to remove any risk to the state for future transportation & FICA cost increases and make all future funding arbitrary rather than formula & true cost driven. Not to mention the huge PSERS liability that the state caused in the first place which is eating up more & more of district's budgets, and mandates that also cost so much but add no value.