HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) – The Pennsylvania State Education Association says public schools are underfunded. The group was at the State Capitol on Tuesday to call on lawmakers to release $1.75 billion in state funding to the schools.
“We’re looking at overall enrollment in public for total education that has been down drastically over the last decade,” says Sen. Scott Martin (R). “As a matter of fact, one year ago, we passed last year’s budget. This year it’s down another 17,000 students.”
The state education association says over 1.5 million students learn in Pennsylvania schools.
“Our children are not pawns in some grand strategy to enact a tuition voucher program that will shift taxpayer dollars away from our public schools to private and religious schools,” says association president Aaron Chapin.
The Commonwealth Foundation says public schools also get money from their local governments.
“We continue to see declining test scores,” says Vice President of Policy Elizabeth Stelle. “We continue to see more students opting for charter schools, private education, and homeschool education. What we need is choice, and we need more mechanisms for the funding to follow the students.”
The School District of Lancaster had to take out a $35 million loan to make payments on bonds.
“They’re going to pay $200,000 in fees, closing costs alone,” says speech therapist and president of Lancaster Education Association Christina Rojas. “That $200,000 could have been more teachers. They could have been more paraprofessionals. We have an extremely large growing population and special education for students with autism, and it’s ultimately taking $200,000 away from them.”
Cutting back on that funding, now all of a sudden, you can’t actually fill in all the needs that you have and have all the number of bus drivers that you need out there, the number of cafeteria workers you need to make sure that students get that nutritional lunch,” says Jimbo Lamb, president-elect, PSEA Southern Region.
The Pennsylvania State Education Association website shows how much state money each district is waiting on.
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