Time for a reality check on school funding

AFTER BITING his tongue for weeks, Mayor Nutter finally let the candidates for mayor have it last week, calling their plans to provide financial aid to help the school district "bogus," "nonsense" and the height of "phoniness."

The occasion was an appearance with Gov. Wolf at the Kensington Health Sciences Academy. Wolf was at the high-performing school to tout his plans to fund education. Nutter was there to school his would-be successors on the city's obligation to the district's students.

The mayor said the pack of candidates can't have it both ways - hugging students, reading to second-graders, giving impassioned speeches about helping the schools being Job No. 1, and then coming up with half-baked, unrealistic plans that don't do what is needed.

He has a point - and was sticking it in their ribs.

Superintendent William Hite has asked for $103 million in additional aid from the city, and Nutter has proposed hiking the real-estate tax by 9.4 percent to raise the money.

All of the candidates oppose the tax. But to come up with the $103 million needed - a need they do not dispute - they have concocted plans that strain credulity, a phrase I first heard from a priest in high school in reaction to my excuse for not turning in my homework assignment on time.

I didn't know what it meant, but I knew it wasn't good.

It's time for a reality check on this issue.

The candidates' plans to help the schools vary, but they share several characteristics: None involves increasing taxes; all offer a pastiche of solutions that may add up in terms of math but not in practicality.

They also ignore the immediacy of the need. The winning candidate for mayor won't take office until January. Hite needs the additional $103 million now - well, at least by July 1 - when the district begins its new fiscal year.

Some of the proposals to raise money require action by City Council and the state Legislature. That is not a fast track. It could take months, if not years, to get action, especially because some of the ideas require a change in the state Constitution.

The plans offered also feature one-shot fixes. For instance, Jim Kenney wants to sell the right to collect back commercial taxes to the highest bidder, presumably a collection agency that will pay for the right to go after deadbeats. He thinks that will raise $40 million. I won't dispute the figure, but I'll simply point out that this is a once-and-done.

You can't sell the right to collect those taxes twice. Ditto a $50 million grant from the city budget that Anthony Hardy Williams favors.

Once-and-done solutions won't work, partly because Hite's "ask" is not for one shot of help but for recurring aid. He wants an additional $103 million not only next year, but in all subsequent years.

There's also the matter of state law. Act 46, the law passed to allow for the state takeover of the district, states that once the city gives the district additional aid, it must continue at that level into the future. It can't grant the district $40 million one year and then take it back the next. It has to keep giving the additional money.

The candidates know this - at least, I hope they do - but part of the disingenuousness (a/k/a flimflam) behind their plans is to pretend that this is not a problem. They'll get the money from somewhere. Now, let's all sing together, "Somewhere over the rainbow . . . "

The mayoral candidates aren't the only ones in Oz.

They were joined last week by Council President Darrell Clarke, who said he was thinking that it would be a good idea to sell the right to collect back business taxes to . . . here it comes . . . raise money to help the school district.

It's proof that bad ideas are like chicken pox. They can spread very quickly.