Surplus sparks board debate
POTTSTOWN » A new wrinkle was added to the debate over fair school funding Thursday night when Pottstown School Board member Thomas Hylton pointed out that federal COVID aid had pushed the district’s surplus to about $15 million.
“We’re crying poverty all the time, but we have a lot of money. We have the highest surplus we’ve ever had in the district,” Hylton said. “Not long ago, when Linda Adams was the business manager, the surplus was $3 million.”
Maureen Jampo, the district’s current business manager, confirmed that between the $750,000
“We’re crying poverty all the time, but we have a lot of money. We have the highest surplus we’ve ever had in the district.”
— Thomas Hylton, Pottstown School Board
“level-up funding” contained in this year’s state budget, and the $1 million of federal COVID aid coming in this year, the district’s surplus is roughly $15 million.
Hylton further pointed out that Pottstown continues to proclaim its students underachieve, in part, because the district is underfunded by Pennsylvania between $11 million and $13 million. The number changes depending on shifting borough demographics, school board member Laura Johnson confirmed.
But Pittsburgh is a district that is among the most “over-funded” district in the state “because they’ve lost most of their students,” said Hylton. “They are spending more per student than all but 10 other districts in the state,” and their achievement level is still not high.
He said 40 percent of students in Pittsburgh public schools drop out before graduating and 50 percent score below the state average on standardized tests.
“That’s not a great record when you’re spending more per pupil than almost every other district in the state,” Hylton said.
“It’s really difficult to bring kids up under circumstances we have, no matter how much you’re spending. To expect miracle results doesn’t happen,” he said.
Whatever Hylton’s arguments about the fair funding issue, it did not stop him from joining the rest of the board that voted unanimously Thursday for a resolution supporting the lawsuit against the state being brought by several school districts, the NAACP and other advocacy agencies, arguing Pennsylvania’s education funding violates the state Constitution.
The lawsuit, the start date of which has again been pushed back, now to Nov. 12, argues that Pennsylvania’s education funding violates Article III of the state Constitution.
The relevant section states: “The General Assembly shall provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of public education to serve the needs of the Commonwealth.”
Pottstown’s resolution reads, in part, “the cur- rent school funding system in Pennsylvania results in grossly different amounts of money spent on children in different districts in violation of the equal protection provisions of the state Constitution; with much less money spent on children in low-wealth districts even though their students have additional educational needs.”
“It’s always easier to say it’s because we don’t have enough money than to do things differently and take people out of their comfort zone,” Hylton said, repeating a request he made in June that the district examines the idea of expanding the school year as a way to boost achievement.
“I know, I’m a curmudgeon,” Hylton said.
Schools Superintendent Stephen Rodriguez replied, “Mr. Hylton you are not a curmudgeon. You are wise and bring a tremendous amount of perspective. You ask big questions.” He added it’s very healthy for any board “to have people who challenge the process.”
That said, Rodriguez, who is also the president of the Pennsylvania League of Urban Schools and has been increasingly vocal about Pennsylvania’s unbalanced school funding in recent years, was not about to let Hylton’s perspective go unanswered.
Firstly, he said, one of the reasons Pittsburgh’s achievement levels are low
“Money is not everything, but it’s not nothing.”
_ Laura Johnson, Pottstown School Board
is because so much of the over-funding-per-student is money “that goes to charter schools” and is thus not spent in Pittsburgh’s public school system.
“All the high-achieving students are pulled out” of the system as a result, said Rodriguez. Flipping Hylton’s argument on it’s head, he noted, “I don’t think The Hill School would say they need less money to get the job done, and that’s nothing against The Hill School.”
Secondly, said Rodriguez, after three years, the federal COVID aid is slated to disappear “and our books are going to look a lot more like they did before COVID.”
Board member Laura Johnson, co-founder of Pennsylvanians for Fair Funding and also a vocal critic of Pennsylvania’s unbalanced and racist school funding system, replied to Hylton’s argument by noting “money is not everything, but it’s not nothing.”
Also important to remember is that the federal COVID aid money, an estimated $13 million over three years, is not “just part of a big bucket,” said Rodriguez. That money comes with very specific strings and cannot be used for spending that is not an approved use.
In fact, during the Sept. 9 meeting of the board’s finance committee, Jampo said “the rules are still coming in” for how the federal COVID aid can be spent.
During that same committee meeting, Hylton, who chairs the finance committee had suggested that with roughly $13 million in federal COVID aid coming in the next three years, the district could begin making regular support payments to the Pottstown Regional Public Library.
Hylton’s wife Frances is the president of the library’s board of directors.
He had suggested donating $172,000 per year to support the library, something he has been writing about in his columns which run as paid advertisements in The Mercury and which are archived on the website he runs titled Pottstown Citizens for Enlightened Leadership.
But his suggestion was politely rebuffed by the board members, all of whom attended the committee meeting.
Jampo said the administration is opposed to that idea for a variety of reasons, one of which is the possibility that doing so could increase the district’s payments to charter schools by $50 per student.
“We have other highpriority items on our list,” Jampo said of the administration.
“We’re only spending $150,000 a year on new curriculum and we need to be spending much more,” said Jampo. “We are just chipping away at something so core as our curriculum.”
“As much as I would love to see the library prosper, I think it would divert attention,” said board member Raymond Rose.
“The library is something that sustains the entire community,” said Board Vice President Katina Bearden. “My concern is sustainability beyond the relief funds we’re getting. I’d need to see what surplus we had, and that we had done everything else we needed to do as a district.”
Board member Susan Lawrence said the library is “certainly a worthwhile thing, but I agree with Maureen, we have many many other things. We need money for the schools first.”
One of the things Lawrence
said she believes should be a higher priority, is added counselors to all the district’s school buildings. During the Sept. 9 committee meeting, she said the counselors at the middle school “are overwhelmed.”
Apparently convinced by Lawrence’s argument, Hylton told the board during the Sept. 16 meeting that in October he intends to formally propose that Pottstown use some of its surplus to hire eight more counselors, at an annual cost he estimated at $540,000.
That suggestion was welcomed by Kelly Leibold who attended the Sept. 16 meeting representing the Federation of Pottstown Teachers.
Leibold, who is herself a school counselor, said national guidelines indicate each school have one counselor for every 250 students.
She told the board during a recent teacher federation meeting there was much discussion about the counseling support need evident among the students as everyone returns to class “and we really do need support in that area.”
School Board President Amy Francis said the suggestion will be taken up during the next personnel and finance committee meetings.