May 19, 2015 3 min read

Gov. Tom Wolf repeatedly asked the same question of his audience Tuesday morning.

“What should I be doing at the state level?”

In his first visit to Washington County since taking office, the governor and state Rep. Brandon Neuman, D-North Strabane Township, held a roundtable discussion at Trinity East Elementary School to glean the concerns of public school educators. Wolf is making his way through the commonwealth in support of his Pennsylvania Education Reinvestment Act, a proposal for a 5 percent natural gas extraction tax that would provide about $1 billion in public education funding.

“This is where we’ve got to invest and get it right. This is about education,” Wolf said.

In addition to Neuman, Wolf was joined by Trinity superintendent Michael Lucas, assistant superintendent Donald Snoke, Trinity East principal Jack Minnick, school board members and teachers.

Wolf told participants a reason he ran for office was his belief that public education has been undervalued. He asked those in attendance to provide specific examples of problems they face.

Lucas was quick to address the costs of operating a school district on a limited budget.

“We’re in a state of survival,” he said. “We’ve made some serious cuts so we can stay afloat.”

For example, he said, the district has not replaced retiring teachers, resulting in larger class sizes.

Wolf’s spending plan would raise the state’s share of public education funding from 35 percent to 50 percent. If his budget were to pass, Trinity would see an increase in state funding for basic education and special education of more than $700,000, beginning with the 2016-17 school year.

A major hit on Trinity’s budget is the cost of their 79 charter school students, Lucas said. The district is required to pay anywhere from $10,000 to $23,000 per student enrolled in private charter schools and about $2,300 for each student enrolled in the district’s charter school.

Lucas said he supports choices and believes Wolf is investigating how to bill districts more fairly for charter education.

Pennsylvania Coalition on Public Charter Schools representatives have criticized Wolf’s budget proposal, saying it is his first step in eliminating charter schools. The proposal calls for a uniform charter tuition rate of almost $6,000.

“This is not an assault on cyberschools,” Wolf said Tuesday. “Cybereducation is really important.”

Also addressed was the amount of standardized testing students must complete. The School Performance Profile system implemented by former Gov. Tom Corbett grades public schools on a scale from 0 to 100, with 90 percent of the score based on student performance on standardized tests.

“We firmly believe in accountability. There’s just got to be a better way to do it,” Lucas said.

Second grade teacher Stephanie Johnson said since starting her career 14 years ago, education has changed greatly.

“When you think about school, you think about the projects you did. You think about the hands-on activities you did,” she said. “That’s what kids connect to. … You don’t remember testing, and if you do, it’s because you were so stressed out about it. … That’s not what school’s about.”

Wolf, who has said the current system places too great an emphasis on standardized testing, said it’s important for taxpayers to see a return on their investment.

“We want to unlock that creativity,” Wolf said. “We need to have some sense that we can say, ‘OK, our money is being wisely invested.’ It’s always about how we strike that balance.”