With a new state budget due on June 30th, newly elected Democratic governor Tom Wolf’s new proposal has created a disagreement with Republicans in the state legislature, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
According to the organization StateImpact: NPR, Wolf initially proposed a 5 percent severance tax on the removal of natural gas through fracking but lowered his proposal to 3.5 percent plus 4.7 cents per million cubic feet of natural gas in October.
The money from these taxes was to be spent on increasing the Pennsylvania education funding.
Wolf’s proposition was sent to the State Senate and Assembly, who altered the budget and sent it back to Wolf, who vetoed it.
In December, the education line item of the budget was approved by Wolf for the first six months of the 2015-2016 cycle, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
As per this budget, each Pennsylvania school district received the same amount of funding as it did in the first six months of the 2014-2015 cycle.
Franklin Regional School District received $7 million and has been able to pay all of its bills, according to Superintendent Gennaro Piraino.
According to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, there was $100 million remaining for the first six months, $50 million of which went to the Education Assistance Program, $12 million to the Chester-Upland School District for Financial Recovery Plan, $3 million to Wilkinsburg Borough School District to transfer the high school students to Pittsburgh School District, and the remaining $35 million was distributed across all the Pennsylvania school districts on a percentage basis based on cuts under previous governor Tom Corbett.
A portion of the budget also went to the Ready to Learn Block Grant.
The first $192 million was given to school districts in the same amount as in the 2014-2015 cycle.
The rest was used to restore the charter school reimbursement program that got eliminated under Corbett.
Lastly, a portion of the budget went to Special Education funding.
According to the Department, $1,076,815,000 was approved by Wolf for the first six months of the 2015- 2016 Special Education budget.
An additional $82,519,000 was distributed across the Special Education Contingency Fund, Core Services funding to intermediate units, Institutionalized Children’s Program funding, special education for wards of state students, and special education for students placed out of state.
The remaining issues in the budget will not be addressed until after the April 26th primaries, according to Piraino.
At that point, they are discussing completing an 18-month budget.
While the 2015-2016 budget has not been fully approved yet, Governor Wolf and the Legislature have begun to make compromises in order to get funding to Pennsylvania schools.
Note: this article was originally published in Franklin Regional High School's newspaper The Panther.
Comments