Nuwar Ahmed, 18, of West Philadelphia is making more trips to the local bookstore these days since the library at her high school was closed due to cutbacks in funding.

Ahmed is a senior at Masterman High School, one of the district’s distinguished and highest performing schools. She enjoys reading books about history and science because it helps supplement her learning in other classes, but she said she and her classmates are prohibited from checking out books and barred from visiting the library unless they are attending a class that is held there.

“For me, in general, it’s lame not being able to go there,” said Ahmed who takes senior seminar class in the library, which helps students with college admissions applications. She said she doesn’t download books and would have to go out of her way to visit the nearest public library branch.

The city’s watchdog groups trace the root of the district’s latest financial woes to what they say amounts to a political slush fund, which doled out millions of dollars in discretionary state funding to certain school districts in areas represented by powerful GOP members of the Pennsylvania’s General Assembly. Republicans outnumber Democrats in both houses.

Public schools across the state, in urban and rural communities alike, are struggling to maintain programs, services and positions in the wake of deep funding cuts, said Michael Churchill, counselor for the Public Interest Law Center.

He contends the way that Pennsylvania currently funds public schools is not sufficient for school districts to fulfill its constitutional obligation of providing a “thorough and efficient” education, “given the huge disparity that exists between wealthy and poor school districts.”

“The Legislature has completely failed to meet its obligation,” Churchill said. “For too long, they have let their reluctance to raise revenue to determine what they provide schools rather than look at the needs of students.”

He sees inadequate school funding as a two-fold problem: the state’s heavy reliance on local property taxes to support schools, and elected officials who fear they will be voted out of office if they approve tax hikes in order to raise school revenue. Churchill said their worries are unfounded, pointing out polls showing public opinion is favorable toward paying higher taxes for educational purposes.

Philadelphia also saw significant population growth in the 1990s but school funding did not keep pace because it didn’t account for growth or declines in residential populations, which increased burdens on school system among other municipal services.

A legal team at the Public Interest Law Center is reviewing legal recourse to “remedy this failure” and may join forces with the Education Law Center, a statewide organization that works to improve access to quality education for children who require additional support services, including students raised in poor households or foster homes, cope with disabilities, or speak languages other than English.

The two law centers are gathering anecdotal evidence about the deteriorating school conditions in the wake of budget cuts that forced elimination and reduction of programs, services, and key positions, from secretaries and assistant principals to nurses and counselors. Widespread layoffs went into effect in June.

In Pennsylvania, more affluent communities receive less state aid because they can rely on a substantial tax base to support the local school district. But state aid is also distributed solely on the basis of enrollment, putting school districts that have higher numbers of special needs students at a disadvantage.

Most states have weighted formulas that compensate school districts that have higher numbers of students who speak multiple languages, live in low-income households, or have disabilities. It costs more money to provide programs and services for each child who requires special services and who come to school less prepared than their peers because they receive less support at home.

Donna Cooper, executive director of Public Citizens for Children and Youth, said that the Legislature stopped awarding funding to school districts with significant numbers of students who speak languages other than English, instead relying on “bogus banding of eligibility for support under the guise of the kind of things that should be in a school funding formula.”

“Cryptically written formulas” were the basis for distributing ELL grants to 21 school districts, Cooper said. And for the first time in at least 20 years, she said budget spreadsheets used to support allocations of funding had not been circulated among the House and Senate Education committees.

This was evidence in her eyes, and others, that the method of distributing school funding smacked of favoritism, was not done in a transparent manner and without consideration of how the amount of funding measured up to actual need in individual districts.

Cooper and Churchill said the culture in the legislature changed when a Republican mayor who served in Rendell’s administration was elected governor, and lawmakers reward school districts in their communities with additional funding.

For example, Reading School District, which is considered the state’s poorest, received the Pennsylvania ELL (English Language Learner Supplement) grant in 2011, along with four school districts in Lancaster, York City, Lebanon and Allentown.

However, Cooper stated that 10 other school districts, including Philadelphia, Norristown and Upper Darby, had greater need based on higher numbers, or higher percentages, of students who speak languages other than English.

Calls for comment to the governor’s office were referred to Tim Eller, spokesman for the state Department of Education who said that the state has no control over federal and local aid to schools but the commonwealth allocates school funding based on aid ratio, which takes into account the relative wealth of school districts and surrounding communities, and the personal wealth of those residents.

Eller said that urban school districts generally receive more state aid than wealthier communities because of those factors. “We reject that notion because the formula that is the law, that drives funding to schools considers market value and personal income of the local area,” he said.

A “hold harmless” clause guarantees school districts the same amount in funding as in the previous year. “Any additional dollars are driven to schools with needy populations, so I would challenge what they’re saying,” Eller said.

With Republican Gov. Tom Corbett in office, the number of school districts receiving the ELL grant jumped to eight school districts in 2012, increasing to 21 school districts in 2013. Cooper called out state lawmakers in Harrisburg who were “cherry picking” school districts that received ELL funding in order to accomplish their political agenda of increasing state aid to those communities.

Lawyers and community watchdog groups said that the system for determining school funding should be predictable, transparent and distribute money equally across all school districts with principles built-in such as fairness and consideration for giving a school district the ability to respond to extra costs that students with extra needs require.

“This is not rocket science, putting together a school funding formula,” Cooper said. “The legislature did it in 2007.”

That was under Gov. Ed Rendell’s administration, a Democrat who served from 2003-2011.

Pennsylvania is one of more than 35 states that have completed costing out studies, which, were used to “calculate the amount of funds needed to provide students with an education that meets state standards,” according to an analysis by the Federal Budget Project.

The federal government measures how evenly or unevenly funding is distributed across school districts in a state with an equity factor which is used to determine the amount of federal Title I grant awards to local school districts under the No Child Left Behind Act.

Pennsylvania had an equity factor of 18 percent, same as neighboring New Jersey, in 2009. That means that per-pupil spending by school districts vary, on average, by 18 percent from the state average. The commonwealth has one of the highest school finance inequity ratings in the country, which indicates the “most variance in funding distribution,” according to the FBP’s analysis.

Only six other states, Idaho, Massachusetts, Montana, Virginia, Illinois and Louisiana, had higher equity factor than Pennsylvania.

That translates to a difference of more than $9.5 million, either above or below the state mean, for a school district with an average size enrollment of 4,300 students.

In Philadelphia, anxiety among students and parents in increasing amid growing concern on the part of school district employees and educational advocates.

Hiram Rivera, executive director of Philadelphia Student Union, said high school seniors and upperclassmen are worried about whether enough staff members will be on hand to help them navigate the college admissions process, and younger pupils in middle school tell him that they feel an overwhelming uncertainty about school conditions in the future.

A number of students have expressed concern about whether they will continue to attend schools without adequate counseling, nursing and library staff. Parents feel powerless to help and students say they’re losing faith in adults who are in charge of running Philadelphia’s public schools.

“This normalizes poverty in a district already ravaged by deep amounts of poverty. It’s an added burden on the working people and the working poor,” Rivera said.

The Philadelphia Tribune – October 4, 2013 – Read article online