Kathy Manderino, Manager of the Campaign for Fair Education Funding, was joined by business
leaders, labor groups, faith-based organizations, civic groups and child advocates to launch a statewide, broad-based, nonpartisan campaign with the goal of ensuring that every student has access to quality education regardless of where they live.
The forty-eight member and growing organization wants to ensure that Pennsylvania adopts and maintains an adequate and equitable system of funding public education by year 2016.
“Our membership is diverse but our mission is focused,” Manderino said. “We believe quite simply that every child deserves a chance to succeed. To accomplish this mission we recognize that a lot of work needs to be done, both by policy makers and by advocates.”
Patrick Down, Executive Director of Allies for Children, identified the first principal of the Campaign to be accuracy. He noted that education funding needs to accurately reflect both the cost of education and the needs of all of the students in Pennsylvania, and explained that at present the basic education funding formula in Pennsylvania does not consider either of the two factors. “As a state we set standards for our students to achieve, but there is no connection between the work that is required to achieve academic excellence and the funding provided to our districts,” Dowd stated. In addition, Dowd highlighted that one in five Pennsylvania children grow up in poverty and need extra support and attention to achieve, as do English as do second language learners. He stated that the campaign is committed to basic education funding that accurately accounts for the needs of students and calculates the relative wealth of districts. 4
Jay Hines, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials, also addressed accuracy as a core principal, and noted that schools send the state collections of data every year but the data is seldom used in the development of a of a funding formula and t has little consequence in new funding decisions.
Tonya DeVecchis-Kerr, Superintendant of Moshannon Valley School District, a small rural school district located in southern Clearfield County, addressed the Campaign’s second principal, stability. She reflected on her school, which has 920 students in grades K-12, and the inability to properly plan for next year and the years to come because of an unreliable budget, and the need for a funding formula that is transparent, sustainable, equitable, and long-range. She shared that her school has had to eliminate classes through attrition, cut back on electives, eliminate a librarian and reduce the nursing staff, and is confident that more cuts will be required in the future. “We are offering fewer opportunities for our kids to learn,” she said.
Pedro Rivera, Superintendant of the School District of Lancaster, explained that he knows firsthand the need for stability in a funding formula. Rivera shared that last year the district faced a deficit of $9 million, while this year the deficit is between $5 and 6 million, and assuredly noted that the deficit is not a result of the mismanagement of money, but the continued loss of resources. He urged legislators to develop a formula that enables schools to continue to meet the needs of all of the students, a formula that takes into account the seventeen percent of the district’s students that are English language learners from seventy-one countries speaking thirty-eight different languages.
Mike Crossey, President of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, and organization representing 108,000 educators in the Commonwealth, echoed the challenges that DeVecchis-Kerr and Rivera. He reiterated that every child deserves a chance to succeed. In addition, he expressed his confidence in the Campaign and noted that he has never before been part of a coalition as diverse.
Bishop Dwayne Royster, Executive Director of POWER Philadelphia, spoke on the third principal of the Campaign, which he identified as responsibility. “An African proverb says ‘It takes a village to raise a child,’ but perhaps it should say ‘it takes all sectors of the state of Pennsylvania to raise a child’,” he stated. The business community, the state, municipal governments, and the local taxpayer all share in the burden of educating our children towards success, Royster said. Further, he explained that it is the shared responsibility of not just the faith communities but every community, and the constitutional responsibility of the state of Pennsylvania to provide adequate and efficient education to every child regardless of race, regardless of income, and regardless of where the child lives. “Children learn by how we treat them in our classes. They also learn by how we treat them in our policy decisions.”
Dave Patti, President of the Pennsylvania Business Council, echoed the need for shared responsibility and suggested that it investments in education need to start at pre-K to ensure that students are someday ready for jobs in the global economy.
William Peduto, Mayor of the City of Pittsburgh and member of the Pennsylvania Municipal League, echoed the need for a reliable basics education funding formula, and stated that Pennsylvania is the one of the only states in the country that doesn’t give every child a fair shot at opportunity.
Michael Nutter, Mayor of the City of Philadelphia and President of the Pennsylvania Municipal League, described the state’s underfunding of public education as a broken system that is a statewide issue and not just a Philadelphia issue. He shared that as he listened to the Superintendant of Moshannon Valley School District talk about her challenges, he reflected on a school in Philadelphia that has two counselors and one nurse for 1,100 students; and another school with 2,000 students and a $15,000 annual budget, which averages to $5 a child.
Pennsylvania is one of only three states in the United States or America that does not consider student enrollment in terms of funding school districts, or the distance of travel, or the number of students that are English language learners, among other factors, he stated. Mayor Nutter thanked the members of the Campaign for making fair funding a core statewide issue.
(From PLS Reports)