Lawmakers have struggled for years to answer the question of how to best meet the Constitutional mandate to provide a thorough and efficient system of public education. For too long, the process of developing a funding formula for education dollars was influenced by politics, rather than good public policy.
To ensure education dollars would be distributed equitably in the future, the General Assembly formed a bipartisan Basic Education Funding Commission two years ago to study how dollars could be driven out to schools based on the real factors that drive the cost of education.
After months of public hearings and cooperation among lawmakers, school administrators, education advocates, teachers and parents, the panel developed a fair funding formula that was lauded by education advocates across the state – including Gov. Tom Wolf. This formula was included in this year’s state budget, which devoted an additional $200 million to education.
Unfortunately, after lawmakers worked diligently and in good faith to remove the political whims of elected officials from the school funding process, Wolf once again inserted politics into the process by rejecting the bipartisan funding formula and inventing his own arbitrary funding scheme.
This was a politically driven plan that cut millions of dollars from rural and suburban districts and directs that money to his political allies.
This distribution is anything but fair.
And it could result in higher taxes and school programs cuts in nearly every corner of the state.
Wolf cut more than $58.5 million in funding for schools in the Midstate. Dauphin County as a whole was cut by $7.8 million; Cumberland County by $6.6 million; Lancaster County by $18.8 million.