The silent majority needs to speak up about school funding
School districts have started the process of setting budgets for the 2024-2025 school year. Precise subsidies for districts are usually not available until the fall, long after the new school year has started, and until our state legislators are finished grappling with each other over the state budget. They think they are doing citizens a favor by keeping the sales tax and state income tax at present rates while they let property taxes skyrocket.
Many Fayette County school districts have already put their employees on notice of possible workforce reductions, primarily affecting teachers. With the COVID-19 funding terminating this year, budgets have become even more distressed with many districts having a shortage of revenue into the millions of dollars.
Property taxes can only generate a limited amount of revenue, far below what is necessary to balance a budget. Gov. Josh Shapiro has proposed one of the largest increases ever in funding, especially for areas with smaller tax bases. Fayette County has nearly the lowest property school taxes in the state and school districts are reaching a desperation stage.
We need substantial increases in our funding and a revamping of the contributions each district makes to Pennsylvania cyber charter schools. It’s been proven that the quality of education in cyber schools is far below that of our brick-and-mortar schools. These schools don’t carry most of the expenses of their brick-and-mortar counterparts, such as utilities, maintenance, and busing, to name just a few. Therefore, cyber charter schools don’t need the same funding amount per student.
Most districts have their own cyber schools, where all of the money remains within the district. But a large percentage of parents still choose Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, of which we pay $10,000 or more. PA Cyber is associated with Lincoln Learning Solutions, headquartered in Hopewell. The auditor general was not allowed to inspect the books of Lincoln Learning. Their CEO has a salary of $337,000 per year, it has a fund balance of $72 million and spends over $1 million per year in lobbying. Our local districts are paying for that and, at the same time, are facing possible layoffs and squeezing more students into classrooms. Even if funding is reduced to cyber schools, our districts will still be paying $8,000 per student who chooses to attend the cyber school.
The silent majority better wake up and speak up before we face situations never seen before in our school districts.
Bob Renzi is a member of the Connellsville Area School District Board of Directors.