School-funding request faces tough road

IN THE PAST, many politicians have justified their reluctance to throw money at city schools by saying that the School District of Philadelphia didn't have defined goals for educational reform and that it spent money wastefully.

By most accounts, Superintendent William Hite has helped change that image by cutting administrative costs, closing schools and, this week, issuing a bold plan for the district - with a bold price tag.

So are the politicians ready to pony up?

Apparently not yet.

Unless the political landscape changes, even an optimistic view of what is possible this budget season falls well short of Hite's request for $320 million in new funding on top of the previously requested $120 million from a city sales-tax increase and substantial labor savings.

"Do I think it's a reasonable ask? Absolutely," said Donna Cooper, executive director of Public Citizens for Children and Youth and a former city and state official. "Do I think it's feasible? Probably not."

If everything currently on the table became law, the district would still be roughly $200 million short of Hite's goal.

"Dr. Hite is trying to set a vision up to rally people around, and [Gov. Corbett] has laid out a funding plan which falls far short," Democratic state Sen. Vincent Hughes said.

Mayor Nutter and City Council, having raised taxes to aid the district in recent years as state and federal money dried up, are calling on Harrisburg to increase funding or at least give the city more options to tax itself further.

"We have a story to tell, a positive story to tell, and we need to work in concert with each other," Nutter said of lobbying Harrisburg. "The school district has not been funded at the level where we can achieve educational excellence."

Corbett, whose office did not respond to a request for comment, has proposed a $29 million boost for the school district, and his fellow Republicans in the General Assembly are reluctant to go beyond that.

Steve Miskin, spokesman for the House GOP majority, said the caucus would have "open minds" when Philly officials make their pleas because Hite and the School Reform Commission "really buckled down and looked at reality and [were] not just whining for more money."

But as for the specific proposals city officials are seeking, he said it would be an uphill climb. Asked whether the House would approve a Philly-only $2-per-pack cigarette tax, for instance, Miskin was succinct: "No."

One thing that could persuade state Republicans to do more, Miskin said, is making big changes in contract terms for the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, which has been deadlocked with the district all year.

That effort will be led by new SRC Chairman Bill Green, who says he's prepared to take the controversial step of imposing terms on the union to achieve savings and work-rule changes like rolling back seniority protections.

"We have to have a teachers' contract that Dr. Hite tells us will allow us to succeed," Green said.

A PFT spokesman did not return requests for comment, but president Jerry Jordan has previously said that the real issue is chronic underfunding of the district and that the work rules being attacked now were created to solve past problems that will re-emerge without them.

Meanwhile, city and state officials are locked in a game of chicken over how to extend a 1 percent city-sales-tax increase (to 8 percent) that was set to expire this year. The measure would bring in $140 million next year, and $120 million of it would go to the district under state authorizing legislation passed last year.

Council so far has refused to pass the tax until the state amends it so that 50 percent of the revenue goes to the enormously underfunded pension system.

State Rep. John Taylor, Philly's only Republican in Harrisburg, said he thinks Council passage of the state version would help the district's position in Harrisburg.

"I'm on board with trying to accomplish" Hite's request, Taylor said. "It will be tough, but where there's a legislative will, there's a legislative way."