If #BlackLivesMatter: Why Does Pennsylvania Have the Most Racist School Funding in the Nation and They Repeatedly Refuse to Fix It

After Five (5) Years of No Action, it’s Time for Governor Tom Wolf and the Pennsylvania General Assembly to Invest $1.22 Billion in Emergency Funding to bring the 138 Underfunded School Districts to their Baseline Funding Level Harrisburg, PA – The nation’s first public protest of slavery occurred in Pennsylvania in 1688. In 1835, Thaddeus Stevens led passage of the Free Education Bill.   Since Pennsylvania’s founding, it has been a leader among nations.   But Pennsylvania didn’t enact school funding formula laws until Act 126 of 2014 established ...

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Editorial: PA’s fair funding formula for basic education doesn’t live up to its name

Posted Mar 7, 2019 at 5:57 AM Let’s say you’d like to refinance your home’s 6 percent, 30-year fixed-rate mortgage to lock in a new interest rate of, say, 4 percent. After you do the deal, you’re told your new 4-percent rate will only apply to 10 percent of the $200,000 mortgage. So you’d get the new rate on $20,000. The other $180,000 would continue to drum up interest at the 6 percent rate. You’d probably wonder how that’s going to make any difference at all. You might even say it wasn’t fair. That’s one way to think about something ...

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York City schools: End of state oversight near?

Lindsay C. VanAsdalan, York DispatchPublished 10:46 a.m. ET June 7, 2018 | Updated 12:43 p.m. ET June 7, 2018 For nearly six years, the York City school board has operated under the watchful eye of a state-appointed financial recovery officer. That watchdog now says the district is making good progress, and her oversight might not be needed much longer. However, Carol Saylor said only one of the four financially distressed districts ensnared by a 2012 law — Harrisburg — has completed its recovery plan, and it's still awaiting word on its recovery status....

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DELCO TIMES: More legislation on the verge on use of state’s fair funding formula

By Kevin Tustin, ktustin@21st-centurymedia.com, @KevinTustin on Twitter Another piece of legislation addressing the way state basic education subsidies are distributed to 500 public school districts is slowly making its way to the state House of Representatives. Reps. Martina White, R-170 of Philadelphia, and Todd Stephens, R-151 of Horsham Township, are seeking co-sponsors for a bill that would require all $6 billion of the basic education fund to be appropriated through the fair funding formula. Their bill follows one introduced on May 7 by Reps. Tim Henness...

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EQUITY FIRST RELEASES 2018 LIST OF MOST UNDERFUNDED SCHOOL DISTRICTS

Citizens for Fair School Funding www.SupportEquityFirst.org Media Contact: Shelly@SupportEquityFirst.org @EquityFirstOrg  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 16, 2018 EQUITY FIRST RELEASES 2018 LIST OF THE MOST UNDERFUNDED SCHOOL DISTRICTS  The Brutal-Truth of Basic Education and Special Education Funding 14 Districts Underfunded by $3,000 Per Student In Basic and Special Education Funding 53 Districts Underfunded by $1,000 Per Student In Basic and Special Education Funding While 265 Districts Overfunded by $1,000 Per Student In Basic and Special Education 90 ...

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Racist Zip Codes

Citizens for Fair School Funding #EquityFirst Media Contact: Equity First Info@SupportEquityFirst.org | @EquityFirstOrg FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 2, 2018 Racist Zip Codes  13 Pennsylvania School Districts Receive Less Than 50% of their Recommended Level of Basic Education Funding  while 99 School Districts Receive TWICE their Recommended Level of Basic Education Funding (Harrisburg, PA) – January 2, 2018 – For 2018, we wish the NFL Steelers and Eagles would take a knee to end racial discrimination in Basic and Special Education Funding in Pennsyl...

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Keystone Crossroads: Fair funding advocates decry Pa. leaders for playing politics with specialty school money

SEPTEMBER 18, 2017 BY KEVIN MCCORRY For years in Pennsylvania, school funding coming from state government was criticized as being irrational, unpredictable, and too-tied to backroom politics. That's a large part of why many celebrated last year when the state adopted a new student-weighted school funding formula built entirely on objective data. But there are still times when lawmakers throw that objectivity out the window. Take for instance the $23 million lawmakers agreed to funnel into what they call a "educational access program" in this year's ...

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David Parker – My Turn: Our students deserve fairly funded schools

  Published August 17, 2017 in the Pocono Record This past December marked the 60th anniversary of the day Rosa Parks got to ride on the front of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. We’ve made a lot of progress on civil rights across this great country since Dec. 21, 1956; but for some reason, in August 2017, in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, we are still treating African-Americans and other people of color like second-class citizens when it comes to education funding. In 2014, our legislature recognized that Pennsylvania distributes education funding ...

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EQUITY FIRST RELEASES 2017 LIST OF CRUSHED SCHOOL DISTRICTS

EQUITY FIRST RELEASES 2017 LIST OF CRUSHED SCHOOL DISTRICTS The Brutal Truth of Basic Education and Special Education Funding 13 Districts Get Less Than 50% Recommended Level of BASIC Education Funding 34 Districts Get Less Than 50% Recommended Level of SPECIAL Education Funding While 99 Districts Receive TWICE, 2X, Recommended Level of Basic Education Funding Incredibly, 15 Districts Get 300% MORE than their Recommended Basic Ed Funding No End of Sight as Already Over-Funded Districts Keep Getting MORE (Harrisburg, PA) –  On the eve of the deliberately-wo...

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Op-Ed: Let’s get PA out of the Back Seat of School Funding

David Parker (R-Monroe) Former Member PA House of Representatives Director – Citizens for Fair School Funding www.supportequityfirst.org Media Contact: Rebecca Kann 717-975-7430 Rebecca@lewisstrategic.com June 21, 2017 Op-Ed: Let’s get PA out of the Back Seat of School Funding Now is the time for Pennsylvania to use the new funding formulas on all Education Funding and stop discriminating against schools with higher minority populations.  (East Stroudsburg, PA) June 21, 2017. This past December marked the 60th anniversary of the day Rosa Parks got to ride ...

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