SEPARATE & UNEQUAL
Rally calls on Sen. Bob Mensch to support fair school funding
POTTSTOWN >> Real-feel temperatures Monday may have been in the high 90s, but if he was listening, it was state Sen. Bob Mensch who was feeling the heat.
Over and over, those speaking at the rally — which was a coordinated effort by POWER Interfaith and duplicated at similar rallies all over the state — called on Mensch to vote in support of a proposal to use a portion of the $3 billion state budget surplus to fill gaps in education funding.
And those speakers even called on the public to call Mensch — literally — offering up the number of his Harrisburg office (717-7873110) and even taking a musical break for everyone in the crowd to call.
Decisions on the budget, and how that budget surplus will be spent, will be made in the next two weeks, Nicholas O’Rourke, co-chair of POWER Interfaith’s Faith Leaders Caucus said, “the time to act is now.”
“I met with Sen. Mensch and he told me that he supports 100 percent funding,” said Stacey Woodland, CEO of YWCA Tri-County Area. “And if he doesn’t support us now, he is choosing which of our children go to Montgomery County Community College and which ones go to Montgomery County Correctional Facility.”
“If he doesn’t vote with us now,” she continued, “he is saying our children matter less than other children in the Commonwealth.”
One of the day’s younger speakers was rising ninthgrader Julia Smith described trying to learn with a shortage of resources; old and damaged band instruments; a lack of clubs and other extracurricular activities; no field trips of foreign languages in middle schools; teachers buying school supplies so students don’t have to go without.
All of this want occurs in the face of the fact that schools with higher percentages of students of color are even more underfunded by Pennsylvania’s education funding system, ranked 47th in the nation for being the most unfair. Pennsylvania spends 33 percent less money on poor school districts than wealthier ones, according to POWER’s research.
“The whiter the district, the more likely it is to receive more than its fair share of funding. The more diverse the district, the more likely it is to receive less than its fair share of state funding, according to POWER, perhaps explaining why they declared Pennsylvania’s school funding “Separate and Unequal.”
“For people who believe that racism doesn’t exist anymore, just compare whiter, more privileged schools to Pottstown schools and you’d see the luxury of what those schools have (compared) to ours,” said Smith.
Another student speaker was Kishan Patel, who graduated earlier this month and spent two years as a student member of the school board and, as such, got an up-close look at the impact of the $13 million the state shorts Pottstown every year.
He said 67 percent of Pottstown’s student body “are students of color” and 68 percent of them come from economically challenged households, “and yet each of our students gets $4,000 less each year than they should” under the fair funding formula.
In addition to his intellectual understanding of the impacts of underfunding, he also has lived the visceral experience. Underfunding means Pottstown cannot pay teachers to stay. He described the feeling he had when his band teacher announced he was leaving.
“When I was in middle school our science teacher left and I had three different substitutes. I learned almost nothing that year and I was already struggling,” said Patel, who graduated as Class Salutatorian.
“Sen. Mensch should have greater vision, and he needs to take action now,” said Patel.
But judging from Mensch’s response Monday to a query from MediaNews Group, his vision is focused solely on the state’s budget sheet.
“I have provided about $3 million additional for Pottstown School District over the past several years, again because I realize their financial situation. No other legislator has made that effort — I have,” Mensch wrote.
To put Mensch’s state grant figure into context — the state’s fair funding formula, which Mensch voted to enact but does not seem willing to vote to fully fund — ensures Pottstown is underfunded by more than $13 million every year. Over those same six years Mensch provided $3 million in state grants, the state was underfunding Pottstown by a cumulative $67 million.
Mensch, R-24th Dist., wrote that he did not attend Monday’s rally because the Legislature is currently in session. State Rep. Joe
Ciresi, D-146th Dist., was present for most of Monday’s rally.
Last week, Ciresi held a fair funding rally at Perkiomen Valley High School and pointed out that using just part of the budget surplus would allow all schools to receive all their funding through the formula “without a tax increase.”
But Mensch argues the following year, the opposite could be true.
“To use the current stimulus money in the recurring budget would increase the budget to $47 billion, and if we’re lucky our revenues next year will be $40 billion. That $7 billion difference would mean very large, and for many people, an unaffordable tax increase,” wrote Mensch.
“The situation is not easy to fix,” he wrote. “Education and human services command over 80 percent of the budget, so to think about cutting somewhere is also very difficult.”
You don’t have to tell Pottstown art teacher Beth Yoder about cutting. She has seen more than her share.
Yoder, who just last week had knee replacement surgery, would not be deterred from speaking. With the help of a walker, she hobbled to the microphone and said the first things cut when schools are underfunded are the arts.
“When you cut music and the arts, you are only educating half the child,” said Yoder. “We need to educate the whole child, not just the half we can afford.”
“Our elected officials are there to fight for our children and our community and they need to fix this right now,” said Yoder. “We put them into office and if they won’t help us, we can remove them.”
Johnny Corson, president of the Pottstown chapter of the NAACP, noted that Mensch recently joined their ranks.
Corson called all chapter members present Monday to the speakers’ dais while they stood together and asked Mensch to vote to help their children.
“If Black lives truly matter,” said Corson, “why are we still standing here demanding our fair share?”
“If (Sen. Mensch) doesn’t support us now, he is choosing which of our children go to Montgomery County Community College and which ones go to Montgomery County Correctional Facility.” — Stacey Woodland, CEO YWCA Tri-County Area