In a recent Letters to the Editor in the Lebanon Daily News the proposal of School Property Tax Elimination through HB/SB 76 was dismissed as merely an effort of robbing Peter to pay Paul.
The logic used to reach this conclusion is confusing to me because that’s exactly how the current system of Property Taxation works. We penalize home ownership and force home owners to pay the lion’s share of education funding in the Commonwealth which results in some very harmful aspects when it actually comes to educating our children.
In 1972 a presidential study was conducted on education finance that reached the following conclusion:
“Significant disparities in the distribution of educational resources have developed among school districts. Though every State has made some effort over the years to reduce the disparities, the results have been only partially successful at best. That, we believe, is because the States have relied on local district financing for the bulk of educational revenues….” 1972 – The President’s Commission on School Finance, Final report.
45 years later and nothing substantial has been done to deal with the inequities in school funding in Pennsylvania. In fact, in those 45 years things have become worse in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania now ranks 3rd highest in the nation for reliance on the local school property tax for education funding leading to some gross inequities in education funding across the Commonwealth.
Should the quality of a child’s public education in the most fundamental areas of Reading, Math and Science skills in Pennsylvania be based on their zip code or on the economic status of their parents?
The reliance on local property taxes to fund education has created gross inequities in education funding in Pennsylvania. Until those inequities have been successfully capped, those inequities will only continue to grow especially under the current economic status.
Across the commonwealth state-funding at the local level varies from school district to school district. It is true that, in most cases, the property-wealthy school district will see less money from the state than the property-poor school districts. That’s why we have a state funding formula but even with the recent changes to that funding formula the state funding never balances the funding to school districts to reach some form of equity in funding per student.
A symptom of the so-called “Traditional School Finance Problem” is characterized by high spending and lower tax rates for property wealthy districts and low spending and high tax rates for property poor districts.
For many living in the property poor districts moving is not an option. Choosing which school districts to raise their children isn’t a possibility. They are restricted by their economic means.
The arguments made by wealthier school districts of local control through property taxation so that wealthier districts can continue to spend more with lower tax rates while property poor districts spend less with higher local tax rates ignores the fact that we are talking about all of the children in our Commonwealth when it comes to providing them with reading, math and science skills. None of those educational aspects should be local. Where you live should not determine your ability to obtain proficiency in those educational skills.
The longer we rely on the Traditional School Finance mechanisms or…the status quo, the greater the inequities.
If we ever want to achieve equitable funding of students in our schools, a critical step begins by locking down the current inequities and not allowing them to grow further through local property taxation.
What if we created a situation where we could change the status quo in such a startling way that things like Reading, Math and Science skills could be equitably funded at the state level while other more local decisions like the local sports and music programs could be more locally funded?
Is it thorough and efficient funding of public schools to have a funding system that allows for some school districts to succeed while others fail?
Doesn’t our Commonwealth Constitution REQUIRE a thorough and efficient system of public education FOR ALL STUDENTS, not just the wealthier school districts?
HB/SB 76 creates a stable number to build a fair funding formula around. It caps the current inequities so they can be more efficiently dealt with at the state level through a funding formula. Future increases based on inflation in years to come would not see the irregularities generated by the current system of property taxation or the constant need to modify the funding formula.
In doing so we could see proficiency leveling in Reading, Math and Science skills when the money starts following the student and stops being centered on zip codes.
The more local aspects of public education can be adjusted through local Income Taxes with voter approved referendums where the community begins to decide how much they want to put into their more local curricular programs.
It’s a common sense solution to a very serious problem in education funding.
On the Edge of the Precipice 