Education Forum Addresses 'What's At Stake?'

East Penn Invested Citizens Chairperson Nicole Basset didn’t pull any punches in kicking off Wednesday night’s EPIC forum on the future of public education. “Little by little, we are destroying the soul of public education,” said Bassett, a mother of three.

The EPIC program, titled touched on recurring themes in most conversations about the future of public education, including unfunded special education mandates and school district budgets that have been stretched to the limits.

Superintendents Thomas Seidenberger, of East Penn School District, Richard Snisack, of Parkland School District, and Russ Mayo, of Allentown School District, along with Susan Gobreski, Executive Director of Education Voters PA, and Dr. Linda De Ivernois, a retired administrator, fielded questions from Bassett and the audience in .

Bassett fielded the first question of the night herself: “What’s at stake?” through the decrease in electives, attrition of school teachers, and the increased ratio of students per teacher she sees in her childrens’ classrooms.

There are reasons for people who don’t actually have kids in school to care about public education. Gobreski pointed out that public education is not only important for students but to a community's economic prosperity and yet education funding has become less certain.

The tight budgets that school districts are dealing with now, resulted from last year’s state budget, Gobreski said, there may be another $860 million cut on the horizon. “What we’re talking about is repeating an extraordinary, historic, devastating cut…[sports programs,] everything that matters is being tabled if not eliminated,” Gobreski said.

Mayo, of Allentown School District, said $39 million and 204 positions have been cut from Allentown SD. Snisack said 130 employees have been cut from Parkland SD.

East Penn’s Seidenberger said: “This is a state-wide issue we’re talking about here.”

Gobreski was asked to explain how state funding for education had changed throughout its history. “Twenty-some years ago, PA had a funding formula and the state paid about 50 percent (of public education costs). The state has lost touch with that formula,” Gobreski said.

When the discussion shifted to unfunded state mandates, Seidenberger spoke about the increase in special education students at East Penn SD. The district will spend $900,000 and receive a reimbursement of $150,000, explained Seidenberger. “In the last five years, we had an increase in our special education [population]… a 95 percent growth in autistic kids,” Seidenberger said.

Parkland’s Snisack added: “Unfunded mandates add millions of dollars each year to expenses…Special Education is a federally mandated program supposed to be fully funded, [but] hasn’t been.”

Another question to the panel prompted a discussion of alternative revenue sources for public education. Possibilities raised included:

• reassessing the Marcellus shale for tax purposes
• taxing smokeless tobacco
• closing corporate loopholes

Seidenberger expressed interest in alternate funding but focused on budget expenses. “Bills are bills and the costs aren’t going to subside,” he said.

The forum was not able to come to a conclusion on alternative revenue sources.

Summing things up, Gobreski said: “I don’t think there’s one silver bullet… It seems like this would be really great if there’s was one simple solution but these problems are complex. People also have to grapple with the fact that it is all tax dollars.”