Newly elected state Rep. Dan McNeill requested the House Democratic Policy Committee hearing in Bethlehem today.
A group of Lehigh Valley superintendents today detailed the impact of state budget cuts on their districts and implored Democratic legislators to reform Pennsylvania's charter school laws.
Newly elected state Rep. Dan McNeill, D-Lehigh/Northampton, requested the House Democratic Policy Committee hearing to discuss how schools have managed budget cuts under Gov. Tom Corbett and what his latest budget proposal means for students.
Parkland School District Superintendent Richard Sniscak spoke on behalf of the five districts attending the hearing in Bethlehem's town hall.
Superintendents asked legislators to reform the state's cyber and charter school laws and increase special education funding.
Corbett's budget proposal increases K-12 education funding, but the majority of it is allocated to mandatory increases in employee pension
payments, Sniscak said. The proposal barely restores the $900 million in
cuts schools have felt in the past two years, officials said.
"These are real dollars with real impacts," said Jolene Vitalos, president of the Bethlehem Education Association. "Northampton County schools would still be down a total of more than $14 million even if the governor's proposed funding increase were to pass."
How far can you cut?
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Bethlehem Superintendent Joseph Roy.
Superintendents outlined the budget cuts they've made in recent years, including job cuts, program cuts and pay freezes.
"We've lost services that were designed for the students who need them the most," Bethlehem Area School District Superintendent Joseph Roy said.
Districts are going green, joining energy and health care consortiums, creating their own cyber academies and refinancing to take advantage of low interest rates.
"I feel we're at wits' end with saving dollars," Catasauqua Area School District Superintendent Robert Spengler said. "... You can't get blood from a stone."
Vitalos implored lawmakers to realize what the cuts have done.
"My students are not just numbers on a budget spreadsheet," she said. "They are children with hopes and dreams and desires to succeed. ... They do not get a 'do-over'".
Cyber and charter schools remain a hot-button issue ever since Corbett axed state tuition reimbursements in 2011-12.
Spengler questioned how he can educate students in his district's cyber academy for $4,000 to $5,000, including a computer. Yet, he is paying $11,000 to $25,000 per-student to other cyber schools that are failing while the private companies that own them are reaping profits, Spengler said.
Schools also discussed their burgeoning transportation costs. State law mandates districts transport all students, even those who attend charter, private and parochial schools, to any school within 10 miles of a district's boundaries. Sniscak suggested reducing that to five miles.
The Salisbury Township School District only has four schools but it buses students to 51 schools each day, Superintendent Michael Roth said.
The 'double dip'
School districts send tuition to charter schools based on their per-pupil costs, and superintendents say the calculation method is flawed.
The calculation to educate each student includes the cost to pay for public school teachers' pensions. That cost should not be factored into the cost to educate a charter school student, since state law guarantees charter school reimbursement for their retirement costs.
Superintendents call that cyber
and charter schools' pension "double dip." The Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials
estimates that cutting the double dip could save districts $510 million from
2011-17, Sniscak said.
School officials want charter school special education reimbursement capped at the district's total per-pupil special education spending. And they want year-end audits to determine the actual costs of educating charter and cyber school students and then a reconciliation of payments that results in over payments going back to the district.
Superintendents spoke of students, who were classified as regular education, being reclassified at their cyber or charter schools, which in turn can net a charter double the tuition.
"That's an alarming trend," Spengler said.
The East Penn School District has seen its annual charter and cyber school contribution gone from $68,923 in 2001 to $3.5 million this year, said Charles Ballard, a school director
Corbett's budget proposal levels special education funding for the sixth year in a row and a plan to shift $10 million to a special education contingency fund would result in a slight decrease for all districts, Sniscak said.
Special education is one of the fastest growing mandated costs for districts and federal and state funding falls woefully short, superintendents said.
Pennsylvania school districts spent almost $1.5 billion on special education not covered by state or federal dollars, a 2009 Pennsylvania School Boards Association report found.
Parkland's spent $6.9 million to educate 125 special needs students, who have "extraordinary costs" over $25,000 per student annually, in 2011-12. The state sent Parkland $3.3 million towards its $17.2 million 2011-12 special education budget.
Sniscak fears it's reaching a point that regular education parents will be pitted against special education parents.
"That's a vicious cycle that's tough to get out of," he said.