Governor Tom Wolf and the Pennsylvania legislature have been deadlocked over the state budget for months. Public schools are near bankruptcy. Some borrowed money to stay open, incurring heavy interest debt.
But the legislature finally passed a budget that Governor Wolf will neither sign nor veto. It will become law without his veto.
It increases education funding, as the governor hoped, but added no new taxes, as he had hoped. Pennsylvania is extraordinarily generous to the fracking industry, which pays minimal taxes while extracting the state’s resources and polluting its waters.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
VERY IMPORTANT!!!: http://www.northjersey.com/opinion/opinion-guest-writers/the-finnish-formula-let-kids-be-kids-1.1531693?page=all&app=10
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Anyone know if PA teacher pensions are impacted?
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This is good news for cities like Reading and Allentown that have had to borrow money to keep the lights on. It has not addressed the much larger issue of the fact that policymakers in many states continue to deliberately cut public school budgets while they expand charters. This issue was at the heart of the impasse between Governor Wolf and the legislature.
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The politicians in the legislature released the money Pennsylvania citizens sent them, the money that doesn’t belong to them and that they were holding hostage?
I guess it’s good, but boy, that’s a really low bar for performance. The adults barely performed their job, months and months after the due date.
Why do we keep telling public school children education is a top priority in this country? That’s obviously a lie. They come dead last on every legislative agenda.
Privatizing liquor stores was way more important than they were, apparently.
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Same old problem: the longer they hold onto the money; the more they think it’s
theirs.
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My understanding is that the education portion of the budget is about $250 million short (half) of what he wanted. And, the last I heard, this budget has in it a requirement that Philadelphia close 5 of its lowest reforming schools for replacing them with charters for the next 3 years. This would mean 15 public schools charterized. This seems unbelievable so I wonder if what I heard is accurate. Anyone know?
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