38 results for author: rkann

Erie Times-News: State Legislature OKs recurring funding for Erie schools

By Ed Palattella Original Article House votes Tuesday to make $14 million in additional aid permanent for Erie School District. Senate voted in favor of the measure on Monday. The Erie School District’s long fight for additional state funding has ended with a stunning political win in Harrisburg that will shape the 11,500-student public school system in the years ahead. With a vote from the state House on Tuesday evening, the Legislature approved $14 million in recurring funding for the Erie School District, a long-desired financial boost that the district said it will use to eliminate its short- and long-term deficits, launch new programs ...

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 budget, $14 million of which is earmarked for the Erie School District. Erie has ...

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 unfairly and established a Basic Education Funding Commission to design a better, ...

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-worst school funding budget of the century, Equity First has released its 2017 List ...

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 on the front of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. We’ve made a lot of progress on ...

EQUITY FIRST JOINS ‘EDUCATION APARTHEID’ RALLY TO FIGHT FOR SCHOOL FUNDING EQUITY

Citizens for Fair School Funding “Support Equity First” Media Contact: Equity First Info@SupportEquityFirst.org | @EquityFirstOrg FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 21, 2017 EQUITY FIRST JOINS ‘EDUCATION APARTHEID’ RALLY TO FIGHT FOR SCHOOL FUNDING EQUITY 2017 Agenda Asks Governor Wolf and General Assembly to End the Nation's Worst School Funding Discrimination in Basic Education and Special Education Funding (Harrisburg, PA) – June 21, 2017 – Equity First joined with numerous of grassroots coalitions, faith-based members of the community and legislators in the state capitol today for an ‘Education Apartheid’ rally. Organized by ...

Op-Ed: 13 Pennsylvania School Districts Receive Less Than 50% of their Recommended Level of Basic Education Funding

Citizens for Fair School Funding “Support Equity First” Media Contact: Equity First Info@SupportEquityFirst.org | @EquityFirstOrg   FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 8, 2017 13 Pennsylvania School Districts Receive Less Than 50% of their Recommended Level of Basic Education Funding 99 School Districts Receive TWICE the Recommended Level of Basic Education Funding (Harrisburg, PA) – June 8, 2017 – Basic Education Funding is the largest General Fund allocation in the Pennsylvania state budget.  For FY 2017-2018, Governor Wolf has proposed spending $5.995 Billion, an increase of $100 Million or 1.7% over last year.[1] In 2016, ...

Bucks, Montgomery school district officials ask state lawmakers for more money for public education

By Chris English, staff writer Area school district superintendents, other administrators and school board members had a clear message for Harrisburg Wednesday during a roundtable discussion and news conference at the Centennial School District administration building in Warminster. "Please give us more money." In a free-flowing discussion organized by a group called The Campaign For Fair Education Funding, officials said the lack of state financial support for education in Pennsylvania compared to most other states forces property taxes up more than they need to be, jeopardizes programs for students and causes other problems. According ...

Pottstown at the center of fair education funding fight

By Evan Brandt, The Mercury POTTSTOWN >> Ground Zero in the fight for fair education funding this week has been 750 N. Washington St. That’s the address of Pottstown High School and the place where the action has been in the last 24 hours. First there was the special Superintendent’s Forum Tuesday night that featured the provocative question — “Why Are My Taxes So High?” The next morning the school was the Montgomery County location for a series of statewide press conferences calling attention to Pennsylvania’s rank as the worst in the nation for the gap between funding for rich and poor schools. For better or worse, ...

School superintendents coordinate to plead for state funding help

GARY ROTSTEIN Pittsburgh Post-Gazette grotstein@post-gazette.com The ability to educate public school students is increasingly hampered by spiraling mandated costs for pensions, special education and charter and cyber schools, which dwarf the size of modest funding increases anticipated from the state, according to a group of Western Pennsylvania school superintendents. The heads of 10 diverse districts joined at West Mifflin High School Wednesday to plead their case that the current system of funding basic education in Pennsylvania is unsustainable and that they have already cut services and staffing to the bone. It is up to the state to ...