The legislature returns to the Capitol Monday to work on the budget. Now is the time to tell senators and representatives to increase education funding and reject charter and voucher bills that take money away from public schools.
Before backroom deals get cut in Harrisburg, make your voice heard. Tell lawmakers to Fund Our Future by funding public education.
What we want:
- Pass Gov. Wolf's proposed $300+ million education budget increase for early childhood, basic K-12, career and technical and special education. It's a small down payment on the estimated $3-4 billion in additional state funding needed to enable all students to meet state academic standards.
- Fund PlanCon, the state program that helps districts pay for school construction and renovations projects and takes the burden off local taxpayers. No child should go to school in unsafe, overcrowded schools infested with lead or asbestos.
- Increase Community College and Temple University funding. Higher education has been flat-funded in Pennsylvania for too long. Rising tuition is driving student debt up and enrollments down. It's time to fund colleges and universities.
- Reject HB 800 - EITC vouchers that give wealthy people tax breaks for donating to private and parochial school "scholarship" funds - and reject HB 356 and HB 357, which would take control over charter school expansion and the sale of unused schools out of the hands of locally elected, accountable public officials and give it to bureaucrats and political appointees in Harrisburg.