Superintendents plead for more state aid

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Baldwin-Whitehall School District is cutting full-day kindergarten.

McKeesport High School has gotten rid of 35 of its 100 teachers.

The Yough School District has increased property taxes by nearly 14 mills, or 19 percent.

School superintendents from those Western Pennsylvania districts and seven others held a joint news conference Wednesday to outline such unwanted steps already taken — and warn of harsher ones that could lie ahead — due to budget pressures they blame on state government. Mandated costs such as pensions, special education and payments to charter and cyber schools have risen far faster than the state’s help with basic education costs, and students are increasingly the victims of necessary belt-tightening, the officials said.

“If immediate systemic action is not taken, I fear the public school buildings in our local area will soon look exactly like the dreary, abandoned steel mills that once were symbols of community growth and hope,” said Dan Castagna, superintendent of the West Mifflin Area School District

His high school hosted the media event, a collaborative effort among diverse districts — large and small, urban and rural, affluent and poor. Through the Campaign for Fair Education Funding coalition, the superintendents’ appearance coincided with four similar conferences taking place elsewhere across Pennsylvania the same day.

School districts and other public education advocates across the state say that unavoidable increases in costs dwarf the size of modest funding increases anticipated from the state in its 2017-18 budget.

“Increases in state subsidies have been minimal and less than adequate to meet normal operating expenses,” Norwin superintendent William Kerr asserted.

Pennsylvania’s new budget is unlikely to have leeway for significant funding boosts because of ongoing revenue problems. The House has sent to the Senate a budget proposal that contains Gov. Tom Wolf’s requested hike of 1.7 percent in basic education funding and 2.3 percent in special education subsidies.

The superintendents speaking Wednesday for the Baldwin-Whitehall, Carlynton, Clairton, McKeesport, Norwin, Plum,