One school district had a strike at the beginning of the year, one had a massive tax increase granted by a judge, and another had to get special approval for a loan. These events made news in recent years, and just yesterday they were back in the news for being among four Allegheny County school districts that had their bond rating downgraded by a bond rating company.
The Auditor General pointed to the report and expressed worry that these districts might have trouble borrowing money to upgrade facilities. He also took the opportunity to point to reforms he has suggested for charter schools and oversight of them.
As usual, no politician seems willing to address the true root cause of the financial difficulties. These would include ever increasing and very generous teacher compensation packages, work rules, sick leave, etc. And the recent budget buster has been the sharp rise in required pension payments owing to the large unfunded liability of the pension plan.
The school boards are reluctant to raise taxes. And rightfully so. The taxpayers are angry with what they have to pay and constant cry for more money. So the school boards, the teachers and public school advocates blame the state for inadequate funding. And it is not as if the schools were doing great academically
Not a word about addressing the unwillingness of teachers to ever make concessions to help financially beleaguered schools. Not a word a about the need to eliminate teacher strikes and the unfair bargaining power that gives the unions.
Nothing is ever offered regarding reform of the bizarre state law that does not permit teachers to be laid off for reasons of financial hardship. They can only be let go if whole departments or programs are cut or after a substantial enrollment decline. Thus, schools are forced to cut programs and that inevitably creates angry backlashes against the Board. What’s worse, union rules require the least senior teachers to be shown the door and that means many of the good young teachers will be fired while older more senior less than adequate teachers get to stay. What a messed up system.
More state funding while leaving teachers the bargaining power that wrecked the system will simply wreck the system at a higher level of spending. Nothing ever seems to get fixed.
