Where there are smokes, there’s fire

It was all hands on deck to beat back the preemption forces threatening 2,000 high quality pre-k seats. A proposed bill to bar PA municipalities from raising funds locally to pay for programs like pre-K was successfully kept from a vote in the midst of budget negotiations in Harrisburg, preserving the pre-K seats in Philadelphia made possible by the Sweetened Beverage Tax. 

Simultaneously, in the backrooms of the state legislature, a murky preemption maneuver orchestrated by Big Tobacco was in the offing.
In the end, Philadelphia’s right to further tax tobacco sales went up in smoke, putting a hard ceiling on increasing this vital source of supplemental funding for Philadelphia public schools. Instead of copping to protecting cigarette makers sulking over sagging demand, legislators say they did it for the children.

The egregious and stealthy state power grab (stripping City Council of its right to regulate the sales of tobacco products, except with regard to how they are displayed) was to safeguard the fiscal health of the Philadelphia school district, says GOP Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati’s chief of staff.

Considering the source and the dismal state of chronic underfunding, a claim of concern over the fiscal health of any school district is rather dubious. Lawyers for Senator Scarnati have, after all, argued that the Fair Funding lawsuit currently before the Common Pleas court was unnecessary because the Fair Funding formula, which PCCY championed, fixes the state’s equity issue.

What the Senator and his lawyers fail to acknowledge is that less than 8% of education funding flows through the Fair Funding formula, leaving 92% patently unfair.

With a recent poll showing overwhelming support for increased state investments in pre-K, it’s not altogether surprising the preemption bill that would have killed thousands of high quality pre-K seats went up in a puff of smoke.

Rumors abound that a connection exists between that and the sudden passage of tobacco regulation preemption, aside from the fact that both would negatively affect Philly kids.

Preemption may very well be the most intriguing story of this year’s state budget.

That discouraging bit of palace intrigue aside, children in Southeastern PA were overall winners in this year’s on-time budget, which, in this election year, contained no new taxes. The gains include a $100M increase in education funding (and an additional $30M for career education, $15M for special education, and $60M for school safety) and $25M for pre-K.

Including this year’s increase in school funding, $540M will go through the Fair Funding formula, of which $190M will be directed to districts in Montgomery, Bucks, Delaware, Chester, and Philadelphia counties.

Still, it’s alarming to see that yet again children are being used as political pawns all to force through bad policies that only hurt children and benefit a privileged few.

We hope voters send a message this election year calling for greater decency and civility so that children are once again off limits to such crass politicking.