Rick Sonntag's School Board Page

Richard C. Sonntag

Governor Rendell recently announced his proposed 2008-2009 budget, and school funding reform is high on his list of priorities. It is time to begin the discussion of the specifics of his plan and how it would affect our district’s taxpayers.

How much subsidy should Pennsylvania provide?

Taxpayers and school officials have long complained that Pennsylvania provides too little funding for our public schools, and as a result our schools are too reliant on local property taxes to fund their operations. On average, Pennsylvania contributes only 36% of school districts’ total education costs.[1] This compares poorly with the national average of about 50%. Wallingford-Swarthmore (WSSD) fares even worse, receiving only about 14% of our revenues from the State. This situation results from a decades-long trend of the State failing to keep up with inflationary cost pressures.

This deficiency is especially problematic in light of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requirements of 100% proficiency in key subject areas by 2014.[2] There is a risk that these standards could become yet another unfunded mandate. But how much should school districts be spending on public education? In 2006 the General Assembly hired a consulting firm to perform “a comprehensive Statewide costing out study to arrive at a determination of the basic cost per pupil to provide an education that will permit a student to meet the State’s academic standards and assessments.”[3] In his recent budget proposals, Gov. Rendell has started referring to the recommended per-pupil expenditure as an “adequacy level” or “adequacy target,” and current funding deficiencies as an “adequacy gap.” I will adopt that terminology in my discussion.

Understanding the “Costing Out Study”

Because Pennsylvania’s 501 school districts span vastly different demographics, the adequacy target has to be unique for each. The “Costing Out Study” accounted for differences between districts by considering the proportion of disabled students, gifted students, children living in poverty, and other factors that can increase the cost of educating a child. The analysis specifically excluded costs such as transportation and debt service, so the adequacy targets do not fully cover all of a district’s costs.

The study modeled the spending of 67 “districts that currently achieve at levels far above current state performance standards”[4] and some additional districts that, although not currently performing as well, are improving quickly. WSSD was one of six Delaware County districts in the highest-performing group. Before we gloat too much, it must be noted that Pennsylvania’s current standards are disturbingly low (54% of students proficient in reading, 45% in math). These standards are rising quickly, with an ultimate goal of reaching the 100% NCLB target by 2014.

The study’s final results largely confirm the concerns over insufficient funding in Pennsylvania as a whole. According to the study, the statewide average adequacy target is $11,926 per student, vs. actual average spending of $9,512. Multiplying by the total number of students in the State, the study suggests that Pennsylvania’s school districts should spend a total of $21.6 billion on public education, compared to our current spending of $17.2 billion, a $4.4 billion (25%) adequacy gap.

Interestingly, the study also notes that Pennsylvania’s state and local tax burden, when averaged across the entire state, is less than states that surround us. It makes the bold suggestion that raising state and/or local taxes to match the average of the surrounding states would bring in an additional $3-6 billion (depending on how you calculate it), making up some or all of Pennsylvania’s $4.4 billion statewide adequacy gap.[5] Clearly such a suggestion should not apply to our heavily taxed, solidly performing school district. The Costing Out Study concluded that WSSD’s spending of $12,359 per pupil is almost exactly equal to our district’s adequacy target. The per-pupil spending by other districts in the County ranges from $2,050 too much to $4,840 too little.[6]

Applying the “Costing Out Study”

Now that the problem has been quantified to Harrisburg’s satisfaction, the Costing Out Study is being used to determine how the tax dollars that we pay to the State are distributed back to the school districts. The news is not good for WSSD and other districts whose taxpayers have already sacrificed to establish and maintain strong public schools. The Governor’s budget proposal explicitly states that the adequacy target will be “compared to the school district’s actual spending in 2006-07. The resulting gap between the adequacy target and the district’s actual spending [is used to calculate] a state funding goal. The 2008-2009 school year begins the multi-year process of phasing in the resulting state funding adequacy goal for each school district.”[7] The table below shows how Rendell proposes to allocate his 5.9% statewide increase in the Basic Education subsidy[8] to individual Delaware County districts in the coming fiscal year[9]:

 Impact on WSSD

 Under Gov. Rendell’s proposal, school districts like WSSD, which have little or no adequacy gap, will receive the minimum available subsidy increase of 1.5%, which falls far short of inflation. Harrisburg’s priority is to subsidize needier districts, which is not a bad thing. Unfortunately, their funding formula also has quirks that could lead to subsidizing districts that simply provided less funding than they could afford.[10] The unfortunate news for WSSD taxpayers is that Harrisburg’s current proposal appears to offer little to those of us who have already sacrificed to build and maintain quality schools. This should serve as a reminder that statewide school tax reform is unlikely to return to our school district as much revenue as we would collectively pay out to the State.

I am working with my School Board colleagues in WSSD and elsewhere in the region to influence Harrisburg to improve the proposed funding formula to better recognize districts that have overcome an unfavorable tax base to achieve success. Expressing your concerns directly to our Harrisburg representatives in a respectful but direct manner will also help.

* Citations and other useful information are available at http://schoolboard.ricksonntag.com.

Rick Sonntag is a School Director in the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District. Any views expressed in this article are exclusively his own and should not be interpreted as representing the views of the School Board.