The Senate Education Committee voted to continue down the path of irony and insanity by passing Senate Bill 1. It is now rapidly careening down the path of self destruction and calling the proposed school voucher bill an “opportunity scholarship”.
The bill, intended to help the state’s poorest children from the lowest-performing schools by providing options of attending other public, private or parochial schools, did not pass the committee without debate. The troubling issues that many of us have discussed, including constitutionality, religious freedom and the cost to public schools were sticking points for two members of the committee.
The Senate Education Committee is composed of six Republicans and four Democrats. Co-sponsoring the proposed legislation is Democratic Sen. Anthony Williams and Senate Education Committee Chair Jeffrey Piccola (R-Dauphin). All six Republicans supported the bill, as did two Democrats, Williams and Sen. Andy Dinniman. Dinniman had some suggested amendments to the bill, including testing and accountability from the non-public schools. This was a simple request in light of the fact that frequent rhetoric coming from our Legislative leaders on data driven decision making. They weren’t even considered. Why would the proponents of Vouchers and or Charter Schools continue to hide from research driven analysis of their programs? Because what little research we do have, like the Milwaukee and Cleveland reports, indicate at best marginal success and at worst, like the Cleveland study for the 2010 student progress, shows that Public Schools outperformed their Voucher student counterparts in every area between the grades 3 to 9!
Democrats Jim Ferlo and Daylin Leach were the members of the committee opposing school voucher bill.
Leach debated the proposed legislation on the grounds that the bill is not constitutional. A view that I happen to concur with as do many other legal scholars despite the Supreme Court’s decision in 2002 case Zelman vs. Simmons-Harris.
Ferlo and Leach are concerned that the voucher system could erode public schools whereas the others feel that the legislation actually offers a lifeline to those children trapped in the low-performing schools. The opposing sides present two distinctly different ways of looking at the same situation. Piccola suggests that Leach’s argument that the school voucher legislation is unconstitutional is an erroneous interpretation of the Pennsylvania Constitution. The chair of the Senate Education Committee also dismissed the argument that the bill is in conflict with the state constitution in regards to support of religious schools with public money.
With all the questions swirling around this legislation, why did the Senate Education Committee seemingly just push it along through the system? Usually, I would be complaining about the slowness of government process, but it is amazing the way this school voucher bill is bulldozing its way through Harrisburg.
Aside from the many questions, concerns and debates swirling around this voucher bill, why don’t we hear much about the cost of this ‘opportunity scholarship’? Is it simply that if the proponents told the truth about this approach they would have to acknowledge that much like in the case of Milwaukee, Cleveland and Florida tax payers were required to kick in more money to make up for the reduction in school district subsidies, sub-contracting of services, substantially larger class sizes, elimination of related arts programs such as music and arts, after-school programs and furloughs!
Gov. Corbett swept into the Governor’s office under the umbrella of austerity and budget constraints. Can someone please explain to me how the estimated $1billion dollars in taxpayer costs by the end of the third-year phase of the voucher program meet that mission? This 1billion does not take into consideration the dollars the bill will siphon from the public schools.
Our newly elected Governor will introduce a budget that takes another 1 billion in state aid from PA’s school districts.
Let me put that into some context for you.
The State’s share of Public education amounts to 5.1 billion dollars; so we are now planning to take one-fifth of the largest share of school district revenues away!
Recently the Governor put a 364 million dollar freeze on state spending; of that amount 337 million was school funding.
Why choose school funding for the largest share of this freeze: simple, because it could be made up by federal stimulus dollars.
School Superintendents were informed of this freeze last Thursday by e-mail.!
The state is using 387 million dollars of unspent Federal jobs monies to help balance this year’s budget.
The legislature is also using 654 million in federal stimulus monies to bridge the gap this year. Does anyone other than me see the absolute Irony in this approach! These very same Politicos’s constantly lamenting the infringement of the Federal Government in State matters: Yet they have absolutely no problem claiming how they wonderfully balanced our budget without revealing the fact that they used the federal villainous Federal Governments dollars to do it! If that is not the height of hypocrisy then I do not know its real face!
There is a 1 billion dollar hole that needs to be filled next year!
This budget also sets the state’s expenditure levels for Education back to the 2005-06 levels!
Again who will be affected by this?
Local School Districts and Boards will be required to raise taxes to make up the difference because legislative mandates will not have been taken off their backs by those in Harrisburg who preach fiscal responsibility.
This is not a new tactic! A previous Governor followed the exact same path in making himself appear to be a fiscal conservative by passing program costs on to County Governments and Local School Boards. Indeed he may have been the one who sent us down the road toward our current Pension Crisis!
Local Districts may be asked to pay more and still have to cut programs so that our Legislative Leaders can again engage in the oldest charade and shell game of all – “shift the blame”. They tout a new program as if it would not raise state taxes. No tax increase at the state level but for local governments that is another matter. The money has to come from somewhere!!
Just one last question; How do our elected officials justify risking 2 to 4 billion dollars of taxpayer monies on programs, that as my last article argues are unproven and at the very best marginally successful on the academic performance side and certainly more costly on the fiscal side?
No comments:
Post a Comment