Governor Tom Corbett’s poll numbers have been sinking, and based on his latest budget, he doesn’t deserve another term as governor. His budget abandons the desperate Philadelphia public school system, which has been under state control for a decade.
The governor has no trouble building new prisons or cutting corporate taxes, but his message to Philadelphia is simple: Tough luck!
As Daniel Denvir reports:
“Gov. Tom Corbett’s proposed public school “rescue package,” currently making its way through the legislature, is a destructive joke with troubling long-term implications. The $140 million, pledged just before the governor signed the state budget last night, falls far short of both the $304 million budget gap and the $180 million the School Reform Commission requested from city and state government.
“It’s also a shell game, so make sure to watch closely: the plan shifts the burden for funding city schools onto those who can least afford it. Much of the funding comes from optimistic projections of increased collections from city tax delinquents, and from an extension of the city’s “temporary” 1-percent sales tax hike. The latter is simply the state giving the city the power to further tax its own disproportionately low-income population. This is patently regressive taxation, meaning that it takes disproportionately from the poor — in a city that already has a regressive wage tax, and in a state that has one of the most regressive tax structures in the nation.
“There is only $47 million in new state funding for city schools (less than half of what adds up to just $127 million in new funding, according to this Notebook/NewsWorks analysis, since $13 million Corbett had proposed previously was already included in the school district budget). Critically, $45 million of that is a one-time-only expenditure — and it actually comes not from Corbett but from the Obama administration.”
Denvir writes that Corbett’s “brave new formula requires Philadelphians and teachers to pay more than we can afford while wealthy businesses and nonprofits contribute basically nothing to solve the crisis. This is supported by Corbett, the SRC, Superintendent William Hite, business leaders, “reform” advocacy groups and, apparently, city leaders.”
Let it be remembered and recorded by historians that Governor Corbett, the state legislature, the state-controlled School Reform Commission, the Broad-trained superintendent, the city’s foundations and its business leaders decided to walk away from their responsibility to the children and public schools of Philadelphia. They knowingly, consciously, callously turned their backs on the children. Remember their names.
Diane Ravitch's blog 