It’s hard not to wonder about things in my new basement classroom.
I kill what bugs I can, wipe away the damp from the desks and try to think over the rattling hum of the ancient overhead heating and cooling system.
The room is about 1/3 smaller than the space I had last year and the class size is about that much larger.
I smile for a moment remembering that after nearly a decade of litigation, Pennsylvania’s state Supreme Court ruled in February that our school funding system violates the constitutional rights of students in poorer school districts like where I teach.
The deadline to challenge this ruling expired in July.
So where’s the additional funding?
I wonder about this as I prepare to teach classes at Steel Valley School District in the western part of the state near Pittsburgh.
Plaintiffs including six school districts, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools claimed that billions more dollars in state aid are necessary to meet the state’s constitutional obligation.
And the judge agreed, but why didn’t she direct the state legislature on exactly how much more state aid to distribute and how?
I mean even Judge Judy would have done that! She would NOT have said, “You owe him money! Now figure out how much and pay him somehow!”
I wonder about that as I get sick from the damp and the mold in my new classroom space.
I wonder about it as I see the school library in my alma mater of McKeesport Area High School permanently closed, the books given away years after the librarian positions were eliminated and the space now becomes a large group instruction room.
I wonder about how students at Steel Valley will access their library now that the sole librarian for the high school and middle school has to teach additional classes reducing the library’s hours almost to nothing.
I wonder about teachers (some retired, others forcibly moved) whose positions were eliminated and the resulting impact on class size and resources.
I wonder about the increasing number of special education students, emotional support students, and English Language Learners all squeezed into larger and larger classes (often with less and less physical space) who are forced to vie with each other for a single teacher’s limited attention.
I wonder about my own daughter in McKeesport sitting in stifling hot classrooms and eating increasingly disgusting lunches.
I wonder about the thousands of experienced teachers who have left the profession for good because of poor salary, poor working conditions, heavy expectations and lack of tools or respect. In McKeesport the school board can’t even agree to the contract its business manager negotiated with its teachers because they think the business manager somehow misunderstood what the district could afford.
I wonder about school boards filled with volunteers who are charged with the task of making water into wine and often end up turning water into vinegar.
I wonder about our legislature mired in a more than two-month-old partisan budget stalemate between Gov. Josh Shapiro, the Democratic-controlled House and the Republican-controlled Senate.
Republicans (and even the Democratic Governor to some extent) want to use taxpayer dollars to pay for students to attend private and religious schools. GOP operatives have signaled that any discussion about meeting the judge’s order to increase funding will have to involve spending more on school vouchers lite (tax deferment scholarships) or the full fledged variety.
I just don’t get it. The Supreme Court case was about public schools – not private and parochial ones. Taxpayers have no obligation to pay for people to send their kids to schools that aren’t governed by elected school boards, that won’t accept all students regardless of race, gender, religion, ethnicity, etc. Why are Republicans putting their ideological priorities in front of the law? If they want to use taxpayer money for this stuff, just make it a voter referendum. Ask taxpayers if they want their money spent this way. And change the constitution so that it’s legal to do so.
Compliance with the judge’s ruling should have nothing to do with it. Instead we should look to ensure every public school district has enough staff to keep class size low and constructive. We should ensure all schools have safe buildings and grounds. We should make sure all schools have broad curriculum with plenty of extracurricular activities and opportunities for students to learn. We should make sure all students have the services they need and the opportunities to access those services.
But we’re not doing that.
We’re just playing politics as usual.
Meanwhile in classrooms across the state the situation gets worse every day.
Parents, students and teachers waited almost a decade for this ruling. And it looks like we’ll have to wait even longer for anything of substance to actually happen because of it.
Our schools are drowning and our kids inside them. No one is even looking for a life preserver.
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I was a public school teacher in California for 30 years (1975 – 2005) in the same school district in the San Gabriel Valley (California has almost 1,000 school districts. The one I taught in had about 19,000 students).
The conditions you describe were a plague back then.
Eventually, I started wearing a mask with canister filters on it so I could breathe without getting headaches and sore throats, a normal daily reaction after I entered my classroom every morning. To be able to teach, I had to take the mask off and lock it away. Still, every time I was alone in my classroom with its ancient, stained carpets and leaky roof, I got that mask out and wore it, so the running sinuses and itchy throat would go away along with the headaches.
Once I left my classroom and was outside, all those respiratory problems and headaches went away in seconds. I also got sinus infections every school year, often more than once a year.
All that stopped after I retired in 2005. I have NOT had a sinus infection since or one of those headaches, knock on wood.
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Lloyd, I get multiple sinus infections every year, too, that seem to always start with the beginning of the school year.
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So that judge who made that “unconstitutional” ruling she is an elected Republican judge. That was a highly charged political ruling. Go to any Republican gather or Democrat gathering and respective judges will be in attendance. So my point is I highly doubt this judge would upset her entire Republican party and make for uncomfortable dinner parties. It is NOT how politics work.
The “unconstitutional” ruling is cover for more ‘Level Up’ funding. That way elected Republicans have a built in excuse when questioned why they send state funding away from voting constituents like me as my school in rural Pennsylvania sounds like your school you describe.
Why has the majority Republican legislature agreed to send funding away to largely urban, democratic territories like Philadelphia where they receive extremely few votes from? Are elected Republicans equitable?!?!? They sure don’t claim to be and Democrats don’t say they are. So what is the story.
‘Level Up’ is the worst way to direct state funding as it introduces bribery, leverage, and political shenanigans and influence peddling between state politicians. State politicians love this.
‘Level Up’ is and has been the bribe from elected Republicans to keep PSEA and elected Democrats happy and quiet on CCA cyber corruption. They certainly are quiet too. PSEA advocates for ‘Level Up’ via their funded subsidiary ‘Educate Voters of PA’ as it keeps jobs and salaries in high PSEA voting membership areas of Philadelphia. Having delivered ‘Level Up’ to PSEA elected Democrats get lionshare of PSEA campaign donations. Again, they just gotta stay quiet in CCA cyber corruption. For successfully protecting CCA cyber corruption from elected Democrats and PSEA the elected Republicans are rewarded by their own biggest campaign donor Jeffrey Yass. Jeffrey Yass $47 million + leaky CCA cyber funding makes him super powerful and influential on the cheap.
But this is why Pennsylvania embraces super progressive policy because it has caused thousands of conservative families to pull funding from their local school district and move it to CCA cyber where LOCAL funding has no LOCAL oversight or accountability of LOCALLY elected officials and nobody gets a CCA tax bill or meets for public scrutiny in a public meeting on CCA cyber. State politicians are like pigs in poop rolling in the dough from CCA cyber.
No end in sight. Progressives love progressive school policy to their own demise, conservatives love ‘school choice’ aka CCA cyber to their own demise, and ‘Level Up’ is an equitable funding of schools offficially.
How many times has Josh Shapiro spoke of HB1422 cyber reform? Zero times.
The Yass elected Republicans don’t want Catholic school or Christian academy Lifeline scholarships or vouchers as they would decrease CCA cyber enrollment.
The Yass PSEA and Yass elected Democrats don’t want public school success as they wanna drive CCA cyber enrollment.
Now we have elected Republicans delivering Kooth to school districts. Just a company that helps with “mental health” and happens to speak with kids as young as 11 about their gender identity via the school computer absent parental awareness. I am sure religious conservative families will love to learn that once Doug Mastriano gets permission to criticize after Kooth is fished into enough local district public schools. I can only imagine the exodus to CCA cyber at that point as what religious conservative family is gonna tolerate Kooth?
They might as well turn the lights off and embrace the no educational model of CCA cyber as this long drawn out process is draining.
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I think there’s more to it, Ed. I don’t doubt that cyber school funding is a consideration in the mix, but I don’t think it’s everything. Nor do I see the Commonwealth’s policies as super far left for the most part. It’s still test and punish. It’s still charter school crazy and give as many tax dollars as they can to private and parochial schools.
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Jeffrey Yass is their biggest donor at 5 times the PSEA since 2017. He doesn’t seem like a kind many who loves kids. What is his agenda. Because that will be the #1 concern of state politicians taking his campaign contributions.
And when you combine his campaign contributions with CCA cyber nearly $500 million per year of LOCAL funding most of which is misused into politically connected buildings, nonprofits, media and repairs I suspect it is the ***only*** things state politicians care about.
Between Josh Shapiro being Jeffrey Yass best buddy and this stuff I think we have an entire state government and media loyal to Jeffrey Yass. I have been after state politicians about 3 things for years: CCA cyber, ‘Level Up’ and Kooth and they will not answer on any of them. Either party. I believe in a few coincidences not 50. This is a Yass uniparty stealing from the public education system and using progressive policy to drive CCA cyber enrollment and funding. Only state that hyperfunds a cyber school with ZERO oversight. Probably $100 million “stolen” but not really because state law allows it via CCA cyber per year. That is alot of freaking money. I suspect the state politicians will do anything and everything for this gravy train.
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[…] we also need to reform those systems so they don’t require us to self immolate. We need an education system that actually provides enough resources to students so that their […]
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