Education funding debate comes to Wilkes-Barre
Nov. 3—WILKES-BARRE — Four school district superintendents, from Stroudsburg to Wilkes-Barre and west of Scranton, told Pennsylvania state representatives of all the problems a lack of adequate state funding can cause for their students during a hearing held at King's College Thursday, but the bottom line was the same in every case: Opportunity.
Wilkes-Barre Area Superintendent Brian Costello told the "Pennsylvania Education Tour" of state reps that while the district had managed to build a new high school with more advanced placement courses available, it didn't have the resources to get more students prepared for such classes.
He said the district's STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Academy is one of the finest in the region, but can't afford enough staff and resources to serve all the students who want to enroll.
And he cited the recent introduction of a "Learning Academy" that saw participating students from a single grade dramatically increase results in state reading tests, improving the number of youngsters scoring "proficient" or "advanced" by 148% in one year.
"Every child can learn," Costello told the politicians in the King's College Burke Auditorium, "It's up to us to give them the opportunity."
Abington Heights Superintendent Chris Shaffer talked about the need for increased safety so students and staff can work at their best, without fear. "Without safety, there is nothing," he said. He talked of one school building constructed in the 1970s that has narrow hallways and other problematic features that can make it both unsafe for all and difficult for those in wheelchairs to get where they need to go.
"I'm not looking for a Taj Mahal," he said of the need for a new school, "I'm just looking for a rectangle. A rectangle with a library and a security vestibule, and wide hallways, and a cafeteria you can't hear when you're not in it."
Stroudsburg Area Superintendent Cosmas Curry focused mostly on the escalating costs of special education, an area where data shows state subsidies have clearly not kept up with demand, even as much of the demand comes from state and federal mandates.
And the costs can jump dramatically with one suddenly disruptive child who must be controlled and placed where he or she can get proper care. Until that need is resolved, he noted, "no education takes place" in that classroom.
He also touched on the demand for — and value of — pre-kindergarten programs, which can substantially reduce the need for remedial or special education services in later year. The district provides pre-K through an outside agency for 75 students, and Curry said he could easily enroll 200 more.
Other topics included burdensome new state mandates for teacher training that several superintendents said take too much time away from classroom teaching and that could probably be streamlined without losing the value of the training, the inequity of funding for cyber charter schools and how much money districts lose when students enroll in outside cybers instead of those provided by the district, and changing health insurance costs.
This was the fourth "Pennsylvania Education Tour' stop since the House Appropriations and House Education committees joined to launch the hearings following a court ruling that the state education funding system is unconstitutional. Critics have long said — and attorneys argued successfully in the landmark trial — that the state system funds districts unequally, depriving many students of their Constitutional right to a fair education. Wilkes-Barre Area was one of the districts to join in the suit.
The four superintendents testified during the first half of the hearing, which ran from about 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. During the second half, the teacher shortage was the main topic, with testimony from Penn State University education professor Edward Fuller, Teacher Plus Pennsylvania Executive Director Laura Boyce, Pennsylvania State Education Association vice president Jeff Ney, and PSEA assistant director of research James Henninger Voss.
Reach Mark Guydish at 570-991-6112 or on Twitter @TLMarkGuydish
