Do School Budgets Ever Decrease?
POTTSTOWN, PA – It’s nice to see some articles surface on this past Thursday’s Pottstown School Board meeting.
Today’s Mercury includes an article on the passing of the 2010-11 school year budget. You can read it here:
Pottstown school budget raises taxes 4 percent
The budget was adopted by a vote of 6-2. The two lone holdouts (board members Thomas Hylton and Nat White) are two individuals who only a mere few months ago wanted to move forward on a proposal to spend $15 million+ taxpayer dollars to fund new heating systems and windows for our elementary schools.
But yet, they felt the need to vote against the budget. So, if nobody is going to play along with Tom Hylton’s games…he just won’t play along at all. So there!
We do commend The Mercury for including contact information of our local PA representatives who will be dicing and slicing the state budget. Which will greatly affect us taxpayers of Pottstown.
The budget was what the budget was. Next year there will have to be more cuts. Everybody knows that.
The reason Hylton and White voted against the budget is because Mr. White is up for re-election next year and Hylton, of course, needs him on the Board. Now, Hylton can write a paid editorial next year, along with more slick mail-out flyers, about how he and Mr. White were the ONLY PEOPLE ON THE BOARD LOOKING OUT FOR THE TAX PAYERS. It’s a good thing that, as a result of this forum, less folks will be believing that nonsense.
Yes and we can also print up flyers pointing out that Mr White and Mr Hylton wanted to cost the taxpayers an additional 15 million dollars for windows and state of the art heat in outdated buildings when we cant even afford to replace retiring teachers!
Hylton aside, I think the answer to the headline is No. I’ve never, ever heard of a school district’s budget going down – nor have I ever heard of property taxes being decreased – except for those who have successfully challenged their assessments.
In the age of unfunded mandates and prevailing wage contracts I can’t imagine a scenario of shrinking a budget without cutting school services and academic programs and staff.
The federal and state governments telling local school districts what programs to develop and pay for must come to an end or require some sort of federal or state funding to enable these programs to be implemented.
The notion that, a window, for example, needs to be replaced and it costs the school district, for example $700 when an identical window installation in the private sector might cost $300 is unacceptable. These numbers are made up but the idea of jobs/services costing more for schools compared to private sector businesses is nothing new. Factoring in the pension crisis, everything on the budget needs to be looked at (which it probably is) and HOW schools do business must be looked at as well.
There should almost be some kind of PPO when it comes to public school supplies and outside labor. Maybe there should be some kind of cooperative that keeps all expenses the same from Phila to
Pitts and Avon Grove to Erie and then IF the disparity in state funding CAN be equalized by region through some kind of ‘per head’ count funding source no SD could complain that they don’t receive their due state money. While this would benefit high density population centers – shouldn’t it? Don’t they put the largest number of students through the system?
What is good for one region will never be what is good for another – different demographics and levels of local revenue will always vary BUT the state needs to stop ‘spoon-feeding’ the SDs that can manage and have the ability to raise funds and star to show other less-able SDs that they deserve the same treatment and if, regionally, other districts have an ability to fund more of their budget locally the, perha[s, there are lessons learned that should be shared across boundary lines. Dare I even suggest that a SD ‘buddy system’ be implemented to raise up some of the struggling districts? While I’m at it…(going for broke, here) ANY ‘new’ state mandates – that will surely become unfunded – should begin as pilot programs in more solvent districts to examine potential roadblocks for the less able SDs; try that one on for size?!?!
The bottom line, as I see it, for P’town is that money will need to be spent one way or another to improve what we have and benefit our delivery of education. Taxes will go up unless we get a sizeable grant or donation – any big, successful celebs willing to invest in the SD? Start calling and writing to people for money, folks. Wouldn’t it be a beautiful thing to secure funding before embarking on ANY sizeable project? Then we could just crack open the piggy bank and start spending with minimalized burdens to the taxpayers.
I can dream, can’t I? My point is this IF we can dream it we can do it! Once we empower ourselves and stop feeling like victims we can create a better reality – not saying it’s easy, though. The question then becomes what are we working for and is it worth the fight?
Ask yourselves, ask your neighbors.