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For Immediate
Release
2/22/10
Piccola Introduces Resolution to Study School Costs
Proposal Garners Bipartisan Support
HARRISBURG (Feb. 22, 2010) - Instead of focusing on what is wrong with today's
schools, Sen. Jeffrey Piccola (R-15) wants to pinpoint what high-performing,
low-spending schools are doing right.
Piccola, who serves as Chairman of the Senate Education
Committee, introduced a resolution earlier this month aimed at further studying
the Commonwealth's schools with the highest performance and lowest costs, and
their best practices in meeting state academic standards. His resolution
garnered bipartisan support, led by Sen. Andrew Dinniman (D-19), who serves as
the committee's Minority Chairman, and 14 other senators.
"In these tough times, it is high time we take a fresh look at what we are
spending on our schools, how much we need to spend, and how schools are spending
the millions they get," Piccola said. Reacting to Gov. Rendell's proposed
budget, unveiled Feb. 9, which calls for a 6.4 percent increase in spending to
public schools, Piccola said, "In this dire economy, we need take a hard look at
the assumption that more money equals better schools."
Piccola's resolution follows a statewide "costing-out" study spearheaded by
the state Board of Education in 2006, and performed by the Colorado-based
Augenblick, Palaich and Associates (APA) for $600,000.
Upon assuming the Chairmanship of the Senate Education Committee in 2008,
Piccola and others questioned the methodologies used in the APA report, released
in December 2007, which set the target cost of educating a pupil successfully at
$12,057 per student, compared with current funding of $9,512.
The APA study called for an additional target of $4.61 billion annually of
taxpayer funds for public school funding, or a 27 percent increase.
"I am more interested in school spending than in itemizing costs in an ideal
world," Piccola said. "What are schools spending millions of taxpayer dollars
on and are they getting results?"
According to data released by the Senate Appropriations Committee, the state
basic education subsidy has increased by 35.2 percent between fiscal year 2003-2004 and
fiscal year 2009-2010, jumping from $4 billion in 2002-2003 to $5.5 billion in
2009-2010.
While the law commissioning the study authorized APA to look at exemplary
school districts, the APA study also included "professional judgment panels" and
evidence-based research that extended far beyond the law's mandate, Piccola and
other critics say. Both the State Board of Education and the APA testified to
the Education Committee that the details of the methodologies used could not be
revealed because it was "proprietary information."
Piccola's resolution will direct the Joint State Government Commission to
study the 82 school districts found to be successful schools in the APA study
and issue a report of their best practices. It also directs the State Board of
Education to cooperate fully with the commission in providing documentation from
the original costing-out study.
"This study will help us learn from the best," Piccola said. "It will take
off the rose-colored glasses and the 'blank-check' mentality to take an
objective look at school funding, honing in on school districts that we know are
succeeding," Piccola said. "Public education in Pennsylvania is a $25 billion
enterprise. We need to have a solid foundation for a continued debate on fair
and adequate funding levels for our public schools."
The new report would be submitted to the Senate Education Committee by Nov.
1, to serve as the basis for future deliberations for basic education funding
levels.
"How can we argue about equity among school districts if we do not
even have an objective assessment of what is adequate?" Piccola asked. "We will examine what schools truly need versus
what they want."
CONTACT:
Diane McNaughton
(717) 787-6801
Additional Information:
Education
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