Harrisburg – the late state budget already costs public schools in Pennsylvania.
Selected leaders in Harrisburg were not able to achieve a budget agreement for the fresh financial year. And up to the narrowly democratic State Chamber, the GOP State Senate and the government Josh Shapiro sign the final expenditure plan-probably will amount to over $ 50 billion-month payments expected by state public schools and higher education institutions.
Until then, schools must take advantage of all reserves that they have or take out loans to keep the door open and make their own payments raised by the state-a double-difficult challenge for districts such as Philadelphia, which are very dependent on state funds.
Uri Monson, Shapiro budgetary secretary, wrote in a letter to educational institutions obtained by Inquirer this week that the state cannot free any of $ 1.4 billion funding for basic education and $ 255 million for financing special education, which were to be paid to school districts throughout Pennsylvania for July and August.
“As you probably know, Pennsylvania is one of the few states with a divided state legislator,” said Monson. “This reality means that a compromise is necessary to get a budget.”
Another $ 527 million will not be released by the state to poviat services, such as childcare, behavioral health and rape centers, among others, Monson wrote in another letter sent on Tuesday.
“Negotiations are ongoing, and the dialogue is full of respect and productive; however, finding an agreement can be slow, and we have not yet reached the final agreement in these extremely important issues,” Monson added, noticing that districts and poviats should plan to secure their own loans and financing to support them during the budget impasse.
The school district of Philadelphia, the largest state of state serving almost 200,000 students, will not receive about $ 311 million of state funds for July and August, said spokeswoman of the Monique Braxton We -mail district.
What’s more: the city’s school district is to pay about 289 million dollars of these funds for charter schools, and the district will probably have to borrow at high interest rates to be able to make these payments and payrolls.
Charter school students constitute about 40% of all students of the district; According to regional data in Philadelphia, she had about 64,000 students in brick charter schools and another 14,000 in cybercrime.
Receiving the bookmark with interest
After the implementation of the fresh formula of financing public education after the previous system was recognized as unconstitutional in 2023, there was no fanfar about whether school districts would get an raise in financing from this year’s budget.
For the first time in over a decade, supporters of public education did not have to worry about the poorest districts of the state, which have few local options for increasing revenues, waiting that the state would again apply its fresh financing system for the second year.
»Read more: Some school districts are in the face of budget cuts, despite winning a court case regarding state financing
However, with the state budget, which have not yet been finalized, school districts, state social universities, state universities and state universities are aimed at collecting the card, because legislators are still trying to agree on the main issues, such as financing mass transit, Medicaid and many others.
Filadelphia school officials “analyze our daily cash flows” and decide how much they will have to borrow to make payments raised by the state and wages at the beginning of the school year. Last year, District officials lent 3.9% interest rate when the budget was about two weeks late.
William Penn School District, which won a breakthrough case in 2023, which led to a fresh education financing system in Pennsylvania, announced in June that he would take a loan of $ 10 million, which was to cost the $ 100,000 USD and fees.
District officials predict that interest rates will be higher this year “based on market conditions,” said Braxton. These higher interest rates translate into the cash cost of the late state budget for school districts: when the leaders in Harrisburg cannot meet their constitutional requirement to transfer a sustainable budget at the beginning of the following financial year, schools and poviats are forced to ensure their own financing in the meantime.
School districts in Pennsylvania adopted an additional $ 50 million interest and fees for borrowing over $ 900 million during the budget deadlock in 2015 under the government of the former governor Tom Wolf, who lasted nine months, according to Pennsylvania School Boards Association.
In addition to late payments at a public school, Pennsylvania cannot pay higher education institutions until the budget is finalized, in accordance with the Monson letter, including:
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$ 110 million for state universities in Pennsylvania with a state of higher education.
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$ 51 million for state universities at Penn State, University of Pittsburgh, Temple University and Lincoln University. These payments benefit students in a tuition discount.
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$ 73 million for social universities in July and $ 25 million for capital payments in August.
State financing is suspended with the latest challenge of Harrisburg for the Philadelphia school district, which will soon start the fresh academic year on August 25. Without additional state financing, SEPTA also has the implementation of earnest cuts of services and tariffs the day before the first school day for students, of which about 52,000 was about public transport to get them to school.
