Corbett Calls For New School District Block Grant Program

Gov. Tom Corbett’s r would overhaul how Pennsylvania distributes money to school districts, but it would maintain the current level of state subsidies for basic education.

Corbett introduced his second consecutive no-tax budget last Tuesday that holds spending in line with the current year's revenue. Corbett said he wanted to avoid cutting basic education, and his new budget keeps school districts funded at the same level as last year. 

But the governor is making some changes, including a proposal to revamp the funding stream between the state and the districts.

Rather than receiving money through various line items, districts now will get almost all their state tax dollars through a block grant program, Corbett said. The changes will allow for greater flexibility at the district level, which, he said, is “bound up in a thicket of outdated and time-consuming regulations and mandates.” 

“The rationale here is clear. Local districts know better how to spend and allocate resources than do bureaucrats in Harrisburg,” Corbett said. “There are no cuts. In fact, you will find a slight increase.” 

• The state will spend $9.5 billion on basic education, up from $9.2 billion in the current budget.
• Corbett's budget plan would cut higher education spending by about $240 million. 
• Student Achievement Education Block Grant combines basic education funding, pupil transportation funding and school Social Security payments into a single budget item.
• About $3.7 million to continue the development of a new teacher evaluation system for the state’s public schools.
•  And $15 million to continue developing a new statewide standardized test to replace the existing PSSA assessments.

The administration said all districts would receive at least as much in state aid as last year, though district-by-district breakdowns were not available.

Democrats and teachers unions criticized Corbett for failing to increase basic education funding, particularly to the poorest districts and those facing financial hardship. 

“School districts are in deep trouble,” said state Sen. Andrew Dinniman, D-Chester. "You will see almost every single school district in this commonwealth raise the property tax because they have almost no choice but to do so." 

Republican lawmakers said the block grant approach would give superintendents and school boards something they have been asking for: more flexibility with financial decisions in a difficult economic environment. 

“Sometimes they may not need all that money in transportation and they can put it into the classroom,” said state Rep. Bill Adolph, R-Delaware, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. “I like that concept, because I’ve heard that a lot from our local superintendents and school boards.” 

Michael Crossey, president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union, said the budget plan would not avert the growing financial crisis in public education. 

“This proposal is an unwise experiment with the education of 1.8 million public school students,” Crossey said in a statement. 

While public education is essentially flat-funded from last year, higher education took another whack from Corbett’s budget ax a year after he initially proposed a 50 percent reduction in state spending on colleges and universities. 

The proposal would reduce funding for three of the state’s four state-related universities--Penn State, Pittsburgh and Temple--by 30 percent each.

The fourth state-related school, Lincoln University, is flat-funded in the new budget plan. 

The four state-related universities get about five percent of their overall funding from the state and are funded mostly through private support. 

The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, the 14 state colleges that are primarily supported with state taxpayer funding, will receive a 20 percent cut in the governor’s proposed budget. 

In a break from last year, Corbett failed to mention school choice or his charter school reform plan during the budget address.

Corbett proposed cutting more than $1 billion from basic education a year ago, a number that was reduced to about $850 million in the budget passed last June. 

Republicans pointed out that state-level spending on basic education actually increased slightly last year, though school districts were left coping with cuts because of a reduction in federal money that came with the end of the federal stimulus program. 

But Democrats said parents, students and schools are hurt by the overall reduction, whether it comes from Washington or from Harrisburg.