OPINION: Education Funding and This State Budget

STATE REP. Darisha Parker advocates the current State budgetary surplus be invested in equalizing the budgets of underfunded school districts.

It is no secret that education funding has been a sticking point in the State legislature, and folks on my side of the aisle have long advocated for changes in the funding formula to make it fair.

In addition to making it fair, increasing funding for poorer schools would potentially be a game changer for those students and their communities. Imagine children going to state-of-the-art schools – no matter where they live – and teachers entering buildings where they will teach for 30 years and not get a deadly ailment because those schools are no longer toxic and poisonous to humans.

I say this all the time, but I think we can all agree that our children are our future. They deserve the very best no matter what their ZIP code may be. The governor’s budget proposal this year goes a long way in ensuring that they receive the best education by adding more than $2 billion to education funds, all without raising taxes.

We can do this because we now have surplus revenue from an influx of American Rescue Plan dollars and higher than expected state revenue funds – to the tune of $10 billion. But my colleagues on the other side of the aisle prefer to put it aside for a rainy day. Let me be clear, it is raining now!

It is time to put that money back into Pennsylvania, and our children should be first in line to benefit from that investment.

This additional money would be a 24% funding increase statewide to help school districts like Philadelphia. Currently, Philadelphia spends just over $13,000 per student while the rest of the state averages $17,000 per student.

Kids who start learning early, in turn, succeed their whole lives. The budget proposal adds a 25% boost to Pre-K funding. There’s no better place to provide a boost than on day one, in pre-K programs.

When we have the full backing of the State on school funding, it helps to hold the line on property taxes and ultimately eases the burden on homeowners.

The lack of resources in certain districts can be directly correlated to the lack of property-tax revenue in those districts. Why, then, when we have a huge surplus statewide would we not invest it in our schools? In our children? In our future?

Education is the path forward and every child is owed that opportunity. We have the ability to make it happen this June, at state budget time. Let’s make it happen and see where that investment takes us. But more importantly, where it takes our children.

Darisha Parker is the State representative for the 198th Legislative District in Northwest Philadelphia.

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