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Pennsylvania Public Schools Are Still On the Brink – Is Corbett Listening?

Keep up the pressure! Tell Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett to fully fund public education and put teachers back to work.

It took a court order, but the Chester Upland School District in Pennsylvania has enough funding to last through February 23. The unionized teachers who committed to work without pay have been granted a brief reprieve. But as we wrote, this is far from sufficient; not only will that funding run out soon, but other Pennsylvania school districts may soon be facing similar financial catastrophe.

Governor Tom Corbett’s office made public a draft plan to address the crisis in Chester Upland, located in Delaware County. It calls for the state to take over both the Chester Upland and Duquense City districts and run them through a three-person oversight board, similar to the Philadelphia School Reform Commission. Like Michigan’s “Emergency Financial Managers,” this board would have the authority to cancel or alter union contracts.

While the draft takeover plan is “intended to be a starting point for discussions,” according to the state Education Department, it has already drawn heavy criticism.

First of all, the Chester Upland School District was already under state control from 1994 to 2010. A return to this kind of administration is hardly a long-term solution. “We’ve had 16 years of [state control] in Chester Upland and have very little to show for it, academically and financially,” remarked Wanda Mann, Chester Upland’s Republican school board president, adding that they have “a mountain of unpaid bills, among a host of other troublesome financial conditions that we inherited.”

She’s right to be frustrated. What good would it do the students of Chester Upland to go back to the policies of the last decade, when the financial management was no better than it is now?

Second, Corbett’s draft plan ignores the sole reason why Chester Upland and the other school districts are having this problem in the first place: last year’s budget, which slashed almost $900 million from Pennsylvania’s education spending.

Listen to State Rep. Thaddeus Kirkland in the video above:

Last year around June, we stood behind the podium on the House floor and we pleaded with the members on the other side and we pleaded with them, “Please, please do not support a budget that would cut the Chester Upland school budget in half…and even told them that if this happens that teachers would be laid off, programs would be cut, schools would be consolidated, children would be left behind. It fell on deaf ears. And we said that we would be at this point at this time, and here we are. Programs cut, educators gone, students walking around hopeless.

What on earth did Gov. Corbett and the Republican legislature think was going to happen? That they would get something for nothing? That they could balance the budget on the backs of students and teachers, while leaving the breaks for oil drillers and for-profit charter schools in place, and nothing would go wrong?

They damn sure thought we wouldn’t notice.

Corbett will unveil his new budget proposal next week. Tell him to fully fund education – don’t balance the budget on the backs of teachers and students.

Tags: Chester Upland, Education, Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett