HARRISBURG — Pennsylvanians who are concerned about rising school taxes should take their complaints to local school boards, not the state government, Gov. Tom Corbett said Wednesday.

“I think the taxpayers need to help themselves,” Corbett replied when a caller on Philadelphia’s Talk Radio 1210 WPHT asked what can be done to help ease the pressures on taxpayers.

In his monthly appearance on the Dom Giordano Program, the Republican governor suggested that excessively small class sizes and overly generous contracts with teachers unions are part of the reason many school districts are struggling financially.

“I would love to see the taxpayers speaking up at the school board meetings” he said.

The current state budget slashed spending for public education by hundreds of millions of dollars, and Corbett has proposed tens of millions in additional cuts for the budget that starts July 1.

The governor said that, when the cost of teacher pensions is included, state funding for public schools is at a record high.

He said those pension costs will rise from $1.6 billion to over $4 billion in the next four years.

The Democratic minority in the state House of Representatives has said it’s misleading to count the pension contribution since it is unrelated to students’ education and masks the depth of the cuts in spending on academics.