What $440 Million Buys for Philadelphia Students

When it comes to the School District of Philadelphia, a lot of numbers get thrown around.  $440 million requested.  $216 million to keep the status quo.  $120 million sales tax.  With all these large numbers, it’s not hard to lose sight of what they mean for our children.  These are not just figures causing unbalance on the District’s ledger; they are teachers, nurses and principals.  Put simply, if the District does not get the money it needs, students will see dramatically larger classes in more dangerous schools lacking art, music, libraries and afterschool sports and clubs.

But if it does get the money it needs—all $440 million requested—the District would also look very different.  PCCY crunched the numbers and found that with that amount of money, every school could have a librarian, a counselor and a nurse, and where the schools are larger, more than one.  Instead of avoiding layoffs of  teachers, every school could have an art and a music teacher and the District could hire an additional 550 classroom teachers and 350 special education teachers, cutting its swollen classes and ensuring all students receive enough quality attention to learn.  Violent incidents would drop because the District could add 50 assistant principals to our larger schools, increase noontime aides by 100 and hire 50 more security staff along with 50 conflict resolution specialists.  Extracurricular activities like sports and clubs that had been cut down in recent years could be dramatically expanded. 

 

 If $440 million represents a fully funded district, $216 million is the threshold for not getting worse.  If the District does not receive an additional $216 million, 1,000 teaching and support positions will be eliminated.  That’s not just hundreds and hundreds of teachers receiving layoffs, but nurses, school police and special education support staff.  High school classes will be 25% larger, with more than 40 students per classroom.  Middle school classes will also hit the 40-student mark and elementary school classes will jump to 37 students per classroom.  “The $216 million is a floor that buys only what the district has right now,” the Inquirer reported, “[Superintendent Hite] is requesting $440 million to improve the schools’ bare-bones conditions.  The current level of funding does not allow for counselors or nurses in every building or adequate supplies.”

Most people will never face a nine-figure budget, so the human cost of the District’s budget deficit can get lost in the scale.  This past year has shown just how tough things have gotten for Philadelphia students, going to overfilled classes everyday in understaffed buildings, often without a nurse available to treat them.  The District needs the city to act just to maintain that status quo.  Approving the sales tax extension would go a long way to that.  But it is going to take much, much more—from the city, the state and others—to see an actual improvement.  For students in the Philadelphia School District, $440 million is not just some hypothetical budget goal.  It’s hope for a better education.

Sales Tax Split Harms Students and Hardly Helps Pensions

Everyone agrees that the School District of Philadelphia is in dire financial straits.  What they cannot agree on, however, is what they are willing to do to get out of them.  The District says it needs $216 million to avoid an additional 1,000 layoffs.  City Council has bills in front of it that would result in $195 million of funding that the District could count on every year and avoid its annual dance with fiscal disaster.  The most important of those bills would direct at least $120 million a year from an extension of the sales tax, guaranteeing the District would not again find itself in the hole it’s been in for the last few years.  Problem solved, right?  Not so fast.

According to the Inquirer, there is “no consensus [in City Council] on whether the district should receive the full $120 million from extending the sales-tax increase,” as “Council wants to split the take between schools and the city pension fund.”  Well, that makes sense; there are a number of financial issues Council wants to address and only so much money to go around.  It makes sense, at least, until you look at the numbers.  Under current legislation, the state will provide enough pension help that we hit an 80% funding target in 2030.  PCCY’s review of the city’s 2014 Actuary Value Report found that if the District splits the funding 50/50 with pension relief, we’ll be able to hit that 80% funding target in…2028.  But what about the other proposal, an incremental split?  2028 or 2029.  Here’s the kicker: to hit the pension goal a year or so earlier, it will cost the District half a billion dollars.  And it will also require the state to pass new legislation allowing it, and we all know how quickly they move on funding for Philadelphia.

Council President Darrell Clarke, in a letter to PCCY, refuted these projections and wrote, “even if City Council were to accept that these assumptions are correct, the benefits of a more responsible and balanced 50-50 split in Sales Tax revenue between SDP and the pension fund are clear based on scenarios provided by the City pension actuary.”  He then points out that under his plan, the pension fund would be considered fully funded (80%) in 2028, while it would only be at 73% at that point in the current plan.  But since he assumes a 3% (and growing) yearly jump, the pension plan would be at least at 79% funding in 2030, coming within a fraction of a percent of the funding goal without a diversion of the sales tax.  Of course projections can change, no one can fully see what the tax base will look like fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years from now; that’s why they are called projections.  But the loss of $500 million will lead to certain, immediate consequences for the School District.

There are questions as to whether Clarke’s plan is even feasible.  “The problem, however, is that making any changes to what the legislature approved would require Harrisburg to act again,” the Notebook wrote.  “State leaders have been showing impatience with Philadelphia’s failure to enact the sales tax, which is hindering efforts to get the state to free up more money for the schools.”  City Council has an opportunity in front of it to go a long way to solving the District’s financial woes.  The question remains whether they will take it.