Protests stall charter school payments
State school boards association files a lawsuit against Pa. Department of Education
In an ongoing dispute rooted in the state’s failure to pass a budget, Senate Democrats and the Pennsylvania School Boards Association persuaded the Pennsylvania Department of Treasury Wednesday to stop payments to charter schools using gambling revenues. The money was scheduled to be sent to charter schools Thursday.
The school boards association filed a lawsuit against the Pennsylvania Department of Education and state Treasurer Timothy A. Reese Wednesday, claiming an interpretation of a law — which allows property tax relief revenue to be used to fund charter schools— was illegal. The lawsuit further asks that the money be sent to public school districts, where it was originally allocated.
The money, collected from a tax on slot-machine gambling, is used to help reduce taxpayers’ property tax bills. Many school districts across Pennsylvania have stopped making scheduled payments to charter schools as the state’s four-month-old budget impasse drags on.
“It is outrageous that the administration would resort to diversion of funds intended for taxpayers in order to immunize charter schools from the fiscal pain all other public schools are experiencing,” the school boards association’s attorneys said in a press release, “and put charter schools in line ahead of other public schools for available state funds.”
In a separate letter to Reese, the Democratic caucus claims two other laws contradict the Department of Education’s legal interpretation that charter schools can be funded using property tax relief revenue. Those laws state that the money collected from gaming is specifically intended for property tax relief.
“The decision of what the law meant and how
the three work together was made by an attorney in the Department of Education,” state Sen. Andy Dinniman, D-19th Dist., said Wednesday. “So we simply said to the treasury, you need to look at all of this before you write the checks.”
The Treasury Department issued a statement Wednesday saying it would withhold the charter payments pending a review of the issues raised in the let-
ter and the lawsuit.
Meanwhile, the Keystone Alliance for Public Charter Schools issued a statement calling the funding halt “a tactic” to deny funding to charter school students. It says the law allows the state to collect money for charter schools if public school districts ignore their obligation to do so.
“What’s interesting about today’s action by the treasurer is the fact when gaming funds were first disbursed at the end of August, some of those dollars were paid to charter schools and the state treasurer never
questioned those payments. Now, two months later, the treasurer is now questioning the legality of these payments when the law specifically permits charter schools to pursue funding through the state when districts have not paid their tuition payments,” the statement reads.
In the meantime, school districts across the state have been waging their own fight against funding charter schools.
Last Friday, the Phoenixville Area School District filed a letter of protest to the Pennsylvania
Department of Education, claiming that the use of local taxpayer money was illegal. It also announced it would only pay 82 percent of funding for charter schools and will wait to receive the state subsidy, before it sends the rest.
School districts across the state with high property values and low poverty rates, including those in Chester and Montgomery counties receive a small percentage of state funding, but usually have adequate reserves to sustain them, Dinniman explained. If they don’t receive the prop-
erty tax relief revenue, it won’t hurt them too badly financially. Yet other school districts, like those in Erie or McKeesport, for example, receive as much as 75 percent of their funding from the state.
“The gaming money is survival money for the districts in this situation,” he said. For the bigger districts, while they may not be hurting “it’s a fairness issue, not a survival issue.”
The only way this situation will truly be resolved is when Harrisburg passes a new state budget.
Dinniman proposed re-
quiring legislators work through the three week recess the legislature receives for the election. He also suggested placing the General Assembly on six hour call, meaning they are required to come to Harrisburg within six hours of receiving a notification.
“Everyone is hurting from this budget impasse,” Dinniman said. “This is just another indication we need to end this as soon as possible. People have to get reasonable and compromise. Compromise means neither party walks away happy.”