Discover how high stakes testing and funding cuts are impacting our kids and schools (and what you can do about it) Forum to be held in the EPSD School Board Meeting Room.
Invited Guests: Susan Gobreski- Exec Director of Education Voters PA, Area Superintendents, Educators and Administrators
Hosted by EPIC (East Penn Invested Citizens), Salisbury Parent Advisory, Allentown Parent Groups and a Coalition of Lehigh Valley Parents who support public education.
State funding for public education depends (among other things) on the wealth of the school district, and by state standards, EPSD is wealthy. Any additional state funding will go more to other school districts and not to East Penn. This redistribution may have societal benefits in that it will help provide a better education for kids in other towns, but not ours. It will not help EPSD taxpayers, either, since their state taxes will go up, without a commensurate increase in funding for our local schools. In PA, three items in the state budget are very close in size - one is the state's contributions to K-12 education, and two more are income tax revenue and revenue from sales tax. Thus, one could say that the AVERAGE return on investment towards education on either income taxes or sales tax is about 100%. Now let's look at the East Penn specifics. EPSD receives about $20 million from the state. But it also collects about $7 million in LOCAL earned income taxes at a 0.5% rate. Since the state levies income tax at 3.07%, the state gets more than 6 times, or $42 million just from earned income, never mind other forms of personal income earned by EPSD residents. Thus, the return on investment for EPSD taxpayers is less than 50% or HALF of the state average. Asking for more gets EPSD less.
Based on data in the state budget and my own calculations, EPSD taxpayers contribute more about 0.4% of the state's income tax revenue on just their earned income tax. That percentage is actually higher since the state income tax includes other forms of income, but I don't have that data. On the other hand, EPSD receives only 0.2% of the state's funding for K-12 education. Our return on our taxpayer dollars is less than 50% compared to the average. This is why is say that groveling for more money is counter-productive for EPSD. EPSD won't get it - and it will be sent to more needy school districts - mostly places that are more urban or more rural. (to be continued)
The mantras that people spout about funding charter schools, special education, non-public transportation and unfunded mandates may change slightly with time, but they are not new. Believe me, I've heard the same things for more than 30 years. Minor changes or tweaks under all governors have taken place over time, but EPSD's funding ratio has stayed the same. Funding hasn't gone down much under the current "evil" governor, nor did it go up much under his "good" predecessor. (although it did go up substantially during the Rendell regime for many of our urban and rural neighbor's during, which only proves my point). Now for my other ideas: 1) Shorter labor contracts (say one or two years, instead of three to five years, which has been the norm) reduce risk for both sides. Both sides naturally want the other side to assume the risk, so eliminate it. In one place that I lived recently, one year contracts were the norm. This allowed both sides to adjust to prevailing conditions and realities. It also kept them talking all of the time, instead of making it a big deal a couple of times every decade, so communication was more open, even on non-contract issues. (to be continued)
2) Calendar year budgeting for schools has several practical advantages. First, the state's budget will be already determined and known. Second, school districts will have more opportuinities for more timely adjustments to changing budget needs with the staggerred cycles. I won't get into the wonkish details, but I've seen it in action over several cycles in a difficult situation.