Helen Gym: What the schools need now

The chaotic scramble in Harrisburg over whether to allow Philadelphia to tax itself for its own schools reveals a humbling lesson about school funding: Philadelphia is the only school district in the state lacking the power to raise its own revenue.

Instead, our schools rely most heavily on the mercurial whims of non-Philadelphia legislators. It took an outpouring of civic action, Mayor Nutter’s presence, a unified Philadelphia delegation and a questionable trade-off on charter authorization just to pass a cigarette tax in the House — only to see legislative action delayed by the Senate this week.

As of today, Philadelphia schools are $93 million short of last year’s miserable status quo. And once again, during this budget round, we didn’t gain meaningful added funding from the state. We also didn’t achieve adequate, sustainable funding since the legislature evaded both a fracking tax and the enactment of a formula for school funding.

So, now what?

While the Harrisburg wrangling continues, the city has to face hard truths about the need for serious local funding streams. City Council and the mayor must reconvene before September to address the School District’s needs, even if the cigarette tax goes through.

In addition, the District needs to let go of controversial work-rule-changes and settle short-term contracts with its labor partners for reasonable cost savings only. 

Finally, there’s no question that public advocacy influenced the agenda at both the local and state levels. Real change needs to carry through at the voting booth in November in the governor’s race and in May in the city primaries.

City leaders cannot make up for Harrisburg’s failures, but they can and must promise that our children won’t be hurt further.