While some might criticize Gov. Ed Rendell’s $29 billion state budget proposal for spending too much or cutting funding for their pet programs, school districts have little to complain about.
Public education once again emerged a big winner in Rendell’s 2010-11 budget proposal, which directs 42 cents of every dollar the state spends on some aspect of education.
Nearly half of the $12.3 billion education budget, or $5.8 billion, is directed to funding the basic operations of school districts. That represents a $355 million increase over this year.
Rendell said his plan “relieves the pressure on local communities to increase property taxes.”
For 32 school districts in Cumberland, Dauphin, Lebanon and Perry counties and surrounding areas, the increases in basic education would range between Northern Lebanon’s 2 percent increase and Susquehanna Twp.’s increase of nearly 21 percent.
The increases are driven by a funding formula the state began to use in 2008-09. That formula seeks to address inequities in the state distribution of education dollars and ensure districts have adequate resources to provide all students with a quality education. Districts getting larger increases have less per-student spending.
Nathan Benefeld, the policy research director of the conservative-leaning Commonwealth Foundation in Harrisburg, said rather than relying on new or higher taxes, the state would do better to curb its “insatiable appetite for spending” and find ways to reduce costs.