Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker made a rare visit to Harrisburg on Monday.<\/p>\n
HARRISBURG, Pa. \u2014 As Pennsylvania lawmakers work toward a state budget agreement ahead of the June 30 deadline, education advocates are urging leaders in Harrisburg to continue investing in public schools and address longstanding funding inequities affecting districts across the Commonwealth.<\/p>\n
The debate comes as Pennsylvania enters the third year of a nine-year plan designed to close what advocates say is a more than $4 billion adequacy gap between the state’s wealthiest and poorest school districts.<\/p>\n
Laura Boyce, executive director of Teach Plus Pennsylvania, said many low-wealth districts rely heavily on state funding to provide students with the resources they need.<\/p>\n
“We are very dependent on the state, particularly for low-wealth districts to receive the funding that they need,” Boyce said.<\/p>\n
Boyce said districts have already used the first two rounds of adequacy funding to make meaningful improvements.<\/p>\n
“Districts have used those first two installments of adequacy funding to do things such as lower class size, to hire additional teaching staff and non-teaching staff, to expand full-day kindergarten, and we’re starting to see really positive signs,” Boyce said. \u201cBut at the same time, it’s important to remember that we’re nowhere close to closing the entire $4.8 billion adequacy gap.\u201d<\/p>\n
Advocates say continued investment is needed to ensure students in rural, suburban and urban communities have access to equitable educational opportunities.<\/p>\n
That message was brought directly to the State Capitol on Monday by Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker, who made a rare visit to Harrisburg to lobby lawmakers as budget negotiations continue.<\/p>\n
Parker called on state leaders from both parties to prioritize education funding in the final spending plan.<\/p>\n
“I don’t care if you are a Republican or a Democrat,” Parker said. \u201cI don’t care if you live in, if you work in, if you are a stakeholder in rural, suburban or urban Pennsylvania. This matter is of urgent need right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
With growing optimism among lawmakers that this year’s budget could be completed more quickly than in recent years, both Parker and Boyce said the decisions made over the next several days will have a lasting impact on students across the Commonwealth.<\/p>\n
“We expect them to be able to compete in this 21st century global economy, and they’re working with antiquated and outdated tools,” Parker said. “We won’t be setting them up to succeed.”<\/p>\n
Boyce said the state budget ultimately reflects Pennsylvania’s priorities.<\/p>\n
“Budgets are reflections of values, and so let’s continue to show that we value our children’s education,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker made a rare visit to Harrisburg on Monday. HARRISBURG, Pa. \u2014 As Pennsylvania lawmakers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-225391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}