Tired of ads? Subscribers enjoy a distraction-free reading experience.
Click here to subscribe today or Login.

State Department of Education stops monthy payment of district subsidies until budget is passed.

Area school districts will have to function without nearly $10 million in state money this month thanks to the budget battle in Harrisburg.
The state Department of Education announced the monthly payment of state subsidies scheduled for Thursday legally could not be made until a budget is passed.
The impact on area districts likely will be minimal, as most have sufficient reserves and money from local taxes to survive a month or two without state funding.
Dallas Superintendent Frank Galicki said his district plans for a “six-month catastrophe” in finances and that the lack of state funds this month – estimated at nearly $340,000 – should not be an issue.
Among 12 districts in Luzerne and Wyoming counties, Dallas gets the smallest percentage of its total revenue from the state, just under 30 percent in 2007, according to a report released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Tuesday. Other districts could be hurt more by the lack of a monthly state subsidy.
For example, the same report showed Northwest Area gets nearly 60 percent of its total income from the state. The July subsidy withheld from Northwest is estimated at $374,771.
The largest local districts are, predictably, out the most money this month. Hazleton Area would have received an estimated $2 million, Wilkes-Barre Area $1.6 million, and Wyoming Valley West nearly $1.3 million.
The Department of Education used the news to again tout Gov. Ed Rendell’s side in the budget battle, which has focused heavily on roughly $1 billion the Republican-controlled Senate wants to remove from Rendell’s proposal, replacing it with federal stimulus money.
Last year, Rendell launched a six-year plan to increase state education funding annually, and despite the economic downturn his proposed budget fulfills that promise.
“Democratic leaders in the House and Senate are standing up for our students and taxpayers by fighting to properly invest stimulus funds to fulfill the second year of Pennsylvania’s school funding formula,” Education Secretary Gerald Zahorchak said in a press release.
But the Senate argues that, even with its proposed cut, overall education spending would still increase this year.
If the budget battle continues long enough to prevent payment of next month’s subsidy – scheduled to be paid Aug. 27, the money involved would be substantially higher, totaling an estimated $23 million in Luzerne and Wyoming counties, according to the education department.
Barring some radical change in the proposed budgets, the districts would get that money once the budget is enacted.