(The following submission is part of a monthly series of editorials, courtesy of our partnership with the North Penn School District and the North Penn School Board.)
It is once again budget season in North Penn School District and in the state legislature in Harrisburg. For those of you who follow the activities in Harrisburg, you may have heard talk of Property Tax reform and/or repeal. In fact, on Feb. 3, several state legislators held a rally in the Capitol rotunda to do away with property taxes and to find alternate ways to fund public education. As local school board directors, it is our duty to communicate with our constituents how we got to the point where school property taxes are such a burden and what we propose would be the appropriate way to provide some relief, while also properly funding our schools.
For some context, Pennsylvania ranks 47th out of 50 states when it comes to the state’s share in public school funding, which has led to an over-reliance on local property tax. The three largest issues that affect the budget of all 500 school districts within the state are:
All 500 districts have the same issue, because every district has been subjected to unfunded and underfunded mandates from Harrisburg and Washington, DC.
Let’s begin with the Special Ed funding mandate.
The federal government passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1975 to support students with disabilities in their right to a free and appropriate public education. That law proposed that federal funds would cover up to 40 percent of the additional expenses to school districts. The fact of the matter is that the federal government has never once, in 45 years, funded it at 40 percent. The highest it was ever funded was 20 percent (!), and now it is down to around 16 percent.
Meanwhile, special education expenses have risen significantly since 1975. The latest data shows an increase of 6.42 percent, per year, in just the 2012 through 2018 time frame.
The second mandated expense placed on all school districts would be the Pennsylvania Public School Employees Retirement System (PSERS). In 1997, PSERS was fully funded—it even had a surplus. Then Governor Tom Ridge, along with Harrisburg lawmakers, reduced the state and district’s portion of contributions to the PSERS fund to nearly zero. Employees, however, were still required to contribute their full share.
Well, we all know what happened in 2008 when the recession hit: the PSERS investment funds lost a significant amount of their value and PSERS was no longer adequately funded to be able to fulfill its obligations. This left school districts, and to a lesser extent, the state, in the position of having to make up the difference to return PSERs back to being fully funded. From 2012 through 2018, that increase to school districts has been 36.10 percent, per year.
The third major mandate would be charter school expenses. The charter school alternative started off as a fine concept to give families a choice when it came to educating their children. It was supposed to be a way of implementing alternative ways to educate our students. However, the sad reality is that the current charter school process has become a way of funneling taxpayer money away from public schools and handing it over to unaccountable schools that, all too often, fail miserably in educating our students.
To add insult to injury, the state used to reimburse districts for a portion of the charter school expenses. Yet, in 2011, after the recession, state reimbursement completely stopped. The legislature simply didn’t have the funds to pay for it anymore but they still required local districts to pay the charter schools, a major shift in the economic burden to local taxpayers. Since 2012, the increase in charter school expenses throughout the state has been 8.75 percent per year. In that same time frame, NPSD charter school expenses have risen from $1.5 million to $2.7 million annually, and we expect that number to rise to $3 million for the upcoming year.
Charter school funding reform is one of the easier, common-sense fixes that Harrisburg could implement that would save public school districts millions of dollars every year. Contrary to what charter schools advertise, they are absolutely not “tuition free;” local taxpayers foot the bill.
For example, NPSD currently pays approximately $12,000 per student to attend a third-party cyber charter school. The district, however, has its own cyber charter school option, which only costs about $3,500 per student. As it stands now, if the parents want the child to go to the third party school, the taxpayers of NPSD have to pay that tuition. A fix being proposed in Harrisburg is that if a school district offers their own cyber alternative, then the student should go there. If the parents want the student to go to the out-of-district cyber charter, then they must pay the difference in tuition rates.
That, to us, is a common sense, fiscally sound solution.
As local school board directors, it is incumbent on us to work with our administration, to go through our budget and ensure that we are spending every tax dollar in the most fiscally responsible way possible. We are fortunate in NPSD to have the fifth-lowest tax rate of the twenty-two districts in Montgomery County. Nevertheless, we are very aware of the burden the school tax puts on our residents, particularly seniors on a fixed and low income.
To that end, NPSD has implemented, now in its third year, a Property Tax Rebate Program that is aligned with the Property Tax 1000 rebate program offered by the state. It is our goal that any property tax increase for our most vulnerable seniors be offset by the amount of the rebate they would receive.
It is also important to realize that, even if you don’t have children currently in our schools, the value of your home is directly affected by the quality of our schools. It is critically important that we maintain the quality of education our students receive in NPSD as we prepare them to become engaged citizens of the world. Our teachers, administration and staff do incredible work every day, and you can clearly and evidently see the results.
We invite you to attend our monthly school board meetings, where we are fortunate to be able to recognize students for their outstanding achievements with proclamations across multi-disciplinary fields of excellence. Whether it is in academic or extracurricular activities, our students consistently demonstrate North Penn’s motto to “Dream Big. Achieve Greatness.”
The bottom line is that these relentless mandated expenses are what inflate your property taxes. We are very concerned that some of the proposals to eliminate property tax by increasing income and sales taxes would put too much control of how funds are distributed into the centralized control of a state legislature’s leadership that has contributed to this crisis. We can all learn from the unfunded mandates listed above that there is a long list of examples where promises were made but not kept, and that has not always worked out so well for local taxpayers and school districts.
Fortunately, in NPSD, we have local legislators that are extremely supportive of public education—they are always looking for feedback to let them know what our priorities are, so they can go to Harrisburg and advocate public education in meaningful and productive ways.
Sincerely,
Tina Stoll
President, NPSD Board of School Directors
See also:
Editorial: It’s Time To Discuss A Ninth Grade Center At North Penn High School
Editorial: Partnerships Key To Success Of North Penn School District
Lucy, Charlie Brown And That Football: Harrisburg Politics And Your Local Tax Bill
Editorial: Why The Renovation Of Crawford Stadium Matters
Editorial: North Penn School Board Offers Praise For Full Day Kindergarten Program
