PA House Dems: Billions More for a Broken Education System while Slashing Public Cyber Charters

PA House Democrats Propose Cuts that would Affect 70,000 Cyber Charter Students

As if the history of public education funding, enrollment, and results don’t matter, PA House Democrats recently proposed a massive, multi-billion dollar taxpayer-funded stimulus over the next several years. The spending bill, HB 2370, has been dubbed an “investment” to historically “underfunded” PA public schools. It also would strip cyber charter public schools of resources headed forward if passed.

PA spends $22,000 per pupil on its K-12 public education students. This number has been steadily rising each fiscal year. This is enough to put Pennsylvania in the top 10 nationally for spending. Meanwhile, public school enrollment has dropped 7.7% since the year 2000. With an influx of cash and less kids in the classroom, the test scores in PA are through the roof, right? Wrong. More money, less kids, and more administrative staff has not resulted in better scores or outcomes; PA’s reading, math, and PSSA scores have been stagnant at best, and even have lost ground, comparatively, in some categories.

PA schools spent $36B in the 2022-2023 school year, a majority of which was earmarked into categories that will never help students, including a whopping $6.8B, or nearly 1/5 of total spending, in reserve accounts.

Here is a breakdown of the top four public education expenditures:

1.      $8.7B – benefits (24.2%)

2.      $6.8B – reserves (19%)

3.      $4.6B – pensions (12.7%)

4.      $2.2B – debt service (6.2%)

Cyber Charter Cuts

While taxpayers are on the hook for a huge funding increase, the Democrats in the same bill moved to cut funding for cyber charter schools, which are, in fact, public schools. In a demonstrably false messaging campaign, House Democrats have been billing Republican opposition to HB 2370 as a call to increase local property taxes, the same local property taxes that are controlled by local school board members, NOT state legislators. Although school districts sit on six times the amount of money in reserve funds than school districts paid out to cyber charters last year, the PSEA-fueled attack of cyber charters from house Democrats continues with fervor.

BEFC Shortfalls

The Basic Education Funding Commission, which toured the state with the task of collecting diverse viewpoints and working toward a bipartisan education spending solution, did nothing of the sort. The prevailing hyper-partisan “majority report” recommended billions in unaccountable tax-dollars.

Further, House Democrats rammed this plan forward for consideration, in the form of HB 2370, with very little time to read it and without the ability to file amendments.

Money is not the answer

Throwing more money at a system that is fundamentally flawed is a very simple way of looking at the problem. Not only is it simple, but it’s also historically ineffective. The only way forward is educational choice or allowing state tax dollars to follow the student to the school of their choice. HB 1904, introduced by Freedom Caucus member, Joe D’Orsie (York) would provide this opportunity to all PA K-12 students, offering the opportunity for all kids to excel. Although universal educational choice is best, Lifeline Scholarships, or the Senate’s version, PASS, would be an amenable first step. Lifeline would appropriate monies to kids trapped in the bottom performing 15% of public schools. This style of school choice has been endorsed by Governor Shapiro, first during his gubernatorial campaign and since in multiple interviews about education.

As we continue into the 2nd week of July, more than a full week after the constitutional budget deadline, we all know that education is the linchpin for the budget. The question is, can Governor Shapiro finally deliver on his promise, or will he cave to his donors in the powerful teachers’ union lobby.