POTTSTOWN SHORT-CHANGED
Underfunding of local schools has cost taxpayers $67M
POTTSTOWN » Students and taxpayers in the borough have been shortchanged by more than $67 million of state school funding in the past six years since a “fair funding formula” was enacted.
“The inequity builds up over the years,” according to researcher David Mosenkis.
Also building up over the years are the racial inequities inherent in that funding. Put simply, whiter-wealthier districts get more than their “fair share” of funding per-student than poorer-less-white districts such as Pottstown and Norristown, Mosenkis has found.
Mosenkis is a data researcher for the faith-based advocacy group POWER Interfaith and provided the first of six ongoing online seminars on Pennsylvania’s unfair education funding system being hosted in Pottstown.
Organized by Myra Forrest, a retired Pottstown Schools administrator who is now the education advocate for the Pottstown Health and Wellness Foundation, the free programs are sponsored by a coalition of local churches and hosted by First Baptist Church of Pottstown.
The first three presentations are available on the church website — www.fbcpottstown.org — and the fourth will streamed live there at 4 p.m. Sunday, March 14.
Back in the 1970s, Pennsylvania was like other states and provided about 50 percent of districts’ funding, Mosenkis said. But that commitment has eroded and now only about 35 percent of school funding comes out of Harrisburg.
Local property taxpayers now shoulder about 60 percent of the burden for funding their local schools and that means “wealthier districts with higher property values will find it easier to raise money for education,” said Mosenkis.
In contrast, “poorer districts with lower property values, even if they tax themselves at a higher rate, are not going to be able to come up as much funding,” he said.
Because poorer districts tend to have higher populations of minority students, that also means “a really stark pattern of racial discrimination has developed,” said Mosenkis. “This is quite disturbing.”
By way of example, Mosenkis provided a comparison between Pottstown and the western Pennsylvania district of Penn-Trafford, both of which educate between 3,000 and just under 4,000 students.
Pottstown is 34 percent white and Penn-Trafford is 95 percent white. And while the median household income in Pottstown is a little over $45,000, the median income in its western counterpart is just over $74,000.
In 2016, a bi-partisan majority of the General Assembly adopted a “fair funding formula” aimed at addressing inequities in how it funds public schools. It adjusts funding for student population, district poverty, taxing capacity, the number of English-language learners and other factors.
Applying the state’s fair funding formula to each district’s state funding shows that each Pottstown students gets nearly $4,000 less than his or her fair share under the formula, while each PennTrafford students get nearly $2,400 more than their fair share, Mosenkis said.
Because only 11 percent of Pennsylvania’s education funding is distributed through its fair funding formula, adopted by a bi-partisan majority of the General Assembly in 2016, “the racial inequity in school funding is actually growing worse instead of growing better,” he explained.
“The gap between what they’re getting and what their needs are is growing each year,” said Mosenkis.
One way political leaders in Harrisburg justify inaction to correct this inequity, said Mosenkis, is to argue that 354 of Pennsylvania’s 500 school districts benefit from the status quo, while 146 are shortchanged.
“But those 146 districts account for a big majority of Pennsylvania’s students,” Mosenkis said. That’s because most of the districts that are short-changed — “like Pottstown and reading and Philadelphia and York” — are larger and/or poorer and have larger minority populations.
As a result many of those districts getting more than they would if the formula were used for all funding, “are getting way too much and could easily afford to lose some. They have been able to take it easy on their property taxes because they get such generous funding from the state.”
Other “over-funded” districts, however, are struggling.
“Even though they are getting more than their fair share of funding from the state, they are getting more than their share of a pie that’s too small,” said Mosenkis.
Many of these inequities are addressed in Gov. Tom Wolf’s budget proposal, said Mosenkis, who supports the plan despite what he sees as its shortcomings.
For Pottstown Schools, it would mean a permanent infusion of an additional $13 million in state funding because Wolf has called for all existing education funding to be distributed according to the formula.
“It would be a big deal for Pottstown and all the other districts across the state that have been shortchanged for all these years,” Mosenkis said.
Wolf’s budget also calls for additional funding to ensure that those districts that have been “overfunded” over the years do not suddenly have large holes in their budgets. It’s a policy Mosenkis wryly calls the “historic privilege retention supplement.”
Although seen as being a politically necessity, that provision would “overwhelmingly go to the whitest districts” and so “it’s important to recognize it doesn’t completely eliminate the systemic racial disparities.”
Nevertheless, he said, those pushing for fair funding should embrace and advocate for the budget because it still makes things better and it’s what’s possible.
Mosenkis urged voters in both under-funded and over-funded districts to contact their legislators in support of the budget proposal in order to make school funding fairer if for no other reason than because it is the moral thing to do.