Richland supervisor candidate Vic Stevens held a press conference last week to blame the current and former supes (except, of course, his RCA buddy Mike Zowniriw) for the increases in school taxes. Despite the fact that Richland is just one of the five towns in the school district. Citizens, seniors - don't be fooled.
Typical RCA hypocrisy. Actually, as the former head of the teachers' union, Stevens is the one single person in Upper Bucks most responsible for those increases. Alas, that is another story for another day.
QCSD is facing a $4 million budget deficit for next year. But don't reach for the tar and feathers quite yet. Despite Stevens' usual RCA scare-and-misinformation campaign, overdevelopment isn't really the culprit.
According to Superintendent James Scanlon, QCSD could probably balance its budget with little, or no, tax increase if not for something called unfunded mandates. These include much-needed special education, and questionable cyber charter schools.
Unfunded, or underfunded, mandates are laws - from Washington and Harrisburg - that create programs requiring large expenditures, but not providing enough money to pay for them. A major headache in public education. And when public education gets a headache, you buy the Excedrin.
The average annual cost of educating a traditional student around here is nearly $12,000. But federally-mandated (and truly necessary) special ed can cost exponentially more. In QCSD, the most expensive students cost $90,000. That is not a misprint.
During 2003-04, the district spent $5.7 million for 750 special education students, but received only $647,000 in federal money. Eleven percent. The problem is, the law requires the feds to pay forty percent. But Washington has other priorities right now, like a war in Iraq, and failing social security. The Republicans can't be bothered by trivialities, such as a law they don't like.
The original legislation goes back to 1975, when America was again starting to fund domestic social programs after Vietnam. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was a federal plan to reimburse the states for 40 percent of the cost of special education. But it was a hollow promise.
See, it takes (at least) two bills to get anything done in government: one to enact the legislation, another to provide the money. Congress has never fully funded IDEA. Not in 1975, and not since. But it has required the programs.
Prior to 1991, Pennsylvania (with minimal help from Washington) covered any difference between educating a regular student, and one with disabilities. But, as costs and student numbers dramatically increased, and federal funds didn't, the fiscal pressure on the state was unsustainable.
Federal money was a trickle. Legislators in Harrisburg didn't want to raise taxes themselves. So, without public hearings, they transferred the lion's share of the expense to local school boards, and let them raise the taxes and take the heat. A brilliant strategy for the state politicians, a nightmare for everyone else.
Every public school district is feeling the pain. Our little pinch is $1.8 million, out of your pocket. Each year. Imagine what you would do if someone owed you $1.8 million. Now imagine what would you do if that debtor was the federal government, the 400 pound gorilla.
You might just send the bill to George W. Bush, Arlen Specter, Rick Santorum, and Mike Fitzpatrick. Quakertown Community School District did. The billing was mostly symbolic, a dramatization of how desperate schools have become. But when Washington doesn't live up to its promises, the burden falls more and more on local taxpayers. You.
Then there is the cost of Cyber Charter Schools, where students learn from a computer at home rather than from a teacher in a classroom. This has become particularly popular with kids who were previously home-schooled, often for religious reasons. They used to cost the district nothing. Now they are costing about $10,000 each, from your school taxes.
Cyber schools are a state mandate, but local school boards have no control over them, or their costs. The Pennsylvania State Education Association has great concerns: "School districts are being socked with unexpected bills which they cannot really anticipate or control," said PSEA spokesman Wythe Keever.
And QCSD never knows how many kids will enroll in cyber schools until the fall. For 2004-05 they estimated tuition at about $320,000, but the actual bill was double, $640,000. No one knows what the cost will be next year.
And what are QCSD taxpayers getting for their $640,000?
In Pennsylvania, students who "attended" the state's six cyber schools in 2003 scored below the state average in 17 out of 24 comparisons in the PA System of School Assessment exam, or PSSA. And, in half the cases, the schools did not meet the state's goals of 35 percent of students showing proficiency in math, and 45 percent in reading.
If budget cuts are ever necessary, QCSD may lose music, or art, or sports. They aren't mandated. But rest easy, we won't lose cyber schools.
Between the unpaid IDEA funds, and the money sent to the cyber schools, QCSD could cover more than $2.4 million of the current $4 million budget gap. That would require only a 4.3 mill increase, or about 4%, rather than the 11.3% increase we are facing right now.
Back in the good old days of 1975, the state paid 55% of Quakertown educational costs. Today, our schools receive about 23% from the state, less than 1% from the feds, and the rest falls on local taxpayers. Despite the rhetoric from Stevens and the RCA, the vast majority of the problem stems from Washington and Harrisburg. As expenses have increased, government contributions have decreased. Perhaps in proportion to military spending.
Citizens. Seniors. Don't be fooled.