‘Hold+harmless’+state+education+funding+agreements+on+the+way+out,+Tomalis+said.

=By Peter L. DeCoursey= =Published by Capitolwire= =5/5/12= = = = = =HARRISBURG (March 5) – Once a new program to collect real-time pupil enrollment information in the coming school year is working, Pennsylvania will stop giving each school district at least the sum it got the year before, Education Secretary Ron Tomalis testified today.= = = =Once that “real-time” measurement of student enrollment is up and working, Tomalis told the House Appropriations Committee that would push so that: “instead of funding institutions, we actually fund students. Going to take a couple of steps to get there, but we will get there.”= = = =His response came during his department’s annual budget hearing, after Rep. Mario Scavello, R-Monroe, said he begged Tomalis to deal with this issue last year.= = = =That agreement to fund each district at least at the level of funding they received the prior year started in 1991, Scavello said.= = = =“That hold-harmless clause set back in 1991, really affected the school districts in my county,” he said, leading to “$10,000, $11,000 property tax bills” on $150,000 homes.= = = =“I’ve got 3,000 empty homes,” in his district he said, and the districts in Monroe County are “closing 5 to 6 schools, our average classroom is maybe 5 to 10 students more than the rest of the state. These are desperate times for us, we are really hurting in Monroe County.”= = = =In answering, Tomalis cited a goal that he and Budget Secretary Charles Zogby have often touted: having funding follow students to whatever schooling their parents selected.= = = =But this year’s state budget instead block-granted a number of kinds of funding, including transportation and Social Security tax payments, into one larger block grant for school districts.= = = =Asked last month how that furthered the goal of having funding follow kids, Gov. Tom Corbett said the block grant was an approach taken this year to give districts more flexibility to apportion limited funds.= = = =The governor said the goal of having funding follow students would have to await a better economy and higher state revenues.= = = =But Tomalis and Zogby have said once accurate enrollment figures were available within days or weeks, the governor would then have better information to use to apportion state funding.= = = =Scavello said accurate figures on growing school districts like his would show how unfair the funding “hold harmless” provision is.= = = =Historically, non-growing districts have lobbied hard to keep that provision.= = = =Scavello also asked if the state would follow New Jersey in opting out of the “No Child Left Behind” mandates. New Jersey has instead opted for a different set of standards created by the administration of President Barack Obama, Tomalis said.= = = =Pennsylvania’s Education Department is studying the alternative standards to see what benefits they would have, Tomalis said. But he added that even current Education Secretary Arne Duncan told him it was possible that Obama could lose the election and the federal department could have different management.= = = =So Tomalis said it was probably best to delay any decision over the two current options until that question was decided, in case Obama lost, and a new law was passed to replace the current options.= = = = = = = = = =News= =home=