State budget includes record funding for public education
A new state budget passed through the General Assembly with bipartisan support last week. The budget, which covers the 2021-22 fiscal year, easily passed through both the House and Senate and includes record-high funding for public education.
Gov. Tom Wolf signed the bill into law Wednesday.
The budget provides $13.55 billion in education funding, including a $300 million increase for basic education.
Elected officials from both sides of the aisle touted the budget's education funding as a major win for students and public schools across the state.
“This budget makes a historic investment in education, so our students get the knowledge and skills they deserve,” Wolf said in a statement. “Pennsylvania provides almost $2 billion more a year for education than when I took office. Students now have access to better technology, resources and opportunities, and we are providing more help to distressed school districts.”
The 2016-17 budget, the first passed under Wolf, provided $11.43 billion in education funding.
The 2021-22 budget includes increases of $30 million for early childhood education and $50 million for special education. It also earmarks $200 million for the Pennsylvania State System of High Education (PASSHE) over the next four years.
The budget passed 43-7 in the Senate and 140-61 in the House. Local officials were nearly unanimous in their support for the new budget.“Butler County is blessed to have outstanding school districts and community colleges,” said Rep. Marci Mustello, R-11th, in a statement. “In order to keep them running at peak efficiency and to give students the best education possible, we must do our best to fully fund schools.”Rep. Lee James, R-64th, highlighted the budget's increase in early education funding.“It's never a bad time to start educating children at a young age,” James said in a statement. “This helps accelerate their learning curve, which in turn leads to greater educational development.”In the Senate, Sen. Elder Vogel, R-47th, also voiced his support.“Senate Republicans recognize the importance of all Pennsylvania schools and the vital role they play in ensuring today's students are given the tools to be competitive in the 21st century global marketplace and be productive members of our communities,” Vogel said in a statement.Local representatives Tim Bonner, R-8th, Daryl Metcalfe, R-12th, and Abby Major, R-60th, also voted in favor of the budget as did state senators Scott Hutchinson, R-21st, and Joe Pittman, R-41st.The only local official to vote against the budget was Rep. Aaron Bernstine, R-10th. In a statement, Bernstine claimed Pennsylvania public schools had profited from the COVID-19 pandemic that forced many of them to switch to online-only or hybrid-style teaching models this year.“While thousands of small businesses are suffering and Pennsylvania's economic recovery is still lagging, public schools are profiting off the pandemic,” Bernstine said. “They are raking in $300 million more in additional taxpayer funds in the budget, despite sitting on more than $4.8 billion in reserve funds and being closed for most of the past year.”
Dr. David McDeavitt, superintendent of Allegheny-Clarion Valley School District, said he appreciates the legislators' support for public education, but small school districts such as his will not reap much benefit from it.“I feel that public education's been underfunded since 2010,” McDeavitt said.Education funding in the state is funneled through the Basic Education Funding Commission, which uses a formula to try to equalize new revenue coming through the budget.McDeavitt said the formula favors districts with growing enrollments and population over small school districts such as his.“There's winners and losers across the state, and A-C Valley's one of the losers,” McDeavitt said. “At this time, I think we'll receive about $50,000, but we're still going to be $1 million underfunded.”Even the modest increase in funding will be put to good use, however. McDeavitt said the additional funds will help pay for a new math coach at the elementary school, additional Chromebooks for students and a replacement HVAC system at the elementary school.Butler Area School District superintendent Dr. Brian White has similar concerns about how education is funded in the state.“It was a good first step,” White said. “But at some point, I think the state needs to look at how education is funded across the board.”White believes that education funding in Pennsylvania is over-reliant on taxes.“We can raise people's property tax until they can't live here anymore, but that's not going to help us,” he said.Overall, however, White said it is a good thing that the state continues to increase its funding year over year.“Having it increase is important because our salaries go up a little each year, our pensions go up,” White said. “The Basic Education Funding needs to keep up.”White said this year's additional funds will go towards learning loss, summer enrichment and after-school programs.
The new budget provides $200 million to PASSHE in $50 million installments over the next four years. These funds, taken from the American Rescue Plan, are meant to support the “redesign and growth of the system to make a college education more affordable and accessible for students,” according to Wolf's website.The largest change in PASSHE's future is the consolidation of six universities — California, Clarion, Edinboro, Bloomsburg, Lock Haven and Mansfield — into two groups of public universities.Though Slippery Rock University is not part of either consolidation group, SRU's chief financial and data officer Carrie Birckbichler said the increased funding will still benefit SRU. “Based on what we know, these funds are for projects across all PASSHE schools to consolidate systems and services, in addition to the proposed integrations of six institutions into two,” Birckbichler said in an emailed statement. “SRU expects that the office of the chancellor will work with the board of governors and the integrating institutions to prioritize use of these funds to best achieve these goals of system redesign.”
