BCT “news” article – 9/6/15

Rather than a full-blown critique of this article, I’ll stick with a couple of errors regarding Aliquippa School District (ASD) funding.

We’re constantly told school districts like ASD are shortchanged when it comes to revenue.  This assertion is wrong and has been since I started fact-checking this claim about 12 years ago.  You can get more detail in my critique of “School funding gap needs to be addressed.”

Mr. Davidson wrote,

“‘We always had a lot of help, but even those funds kept shrinking,’ DiBenedetto said.  At one time, state funding accounted for 50 percent of education costs, but when DiBenedetto retired [in 2004], the state was providing less than 35 percent in his district.”

As you will read below, it looks like Mr. Davidson accepted what ASD interviewees told him as gospel and did no fact-checking.

Regarding Mr. Davidson’s first claim, here’s what I wrote in a 2003 letter to the editor: “The existence of 50/50 state/local funding in the 1970s is a myth.  According to Pennsylvania Department of Education data published by The Commonwealth Foundation (TCF), the state contributions for 1968-2000 ranged from a low of 37.1% (1990-91) to a high of 44.7% (1974-75).  State funding increased by 668.2%, nearly twice the concurrent rate of inflation.  Obviously, the state wasn’t holding back.  The problem is school boards raised property taxes by 814.4%, more than twice the concurrent rate of inflation.  The problem is overheated spending.”

I believe Mr. Davidson is also in error about what the mythical 50% was.  As the myth goes, the 50% was for overall education funding, not on an SD-by-SD basis.

Contrary to Mr. Davidson’s second claim, 52.6% of ASD’s revenue for school year (SY) 2003-2004 came from state taxpayers; federal taxpayers paid 14.7% and local taxpayers paid 32.8%.  For SY 2011-2012, those figures were 62.2%, 8.7%, and 29.1%, respectively.  Local revenue was in the range of $5.1 million to $6.3 million from SY 2000-2001 to SY 2012-2013.

Here’s an inconvenient truth neither ASD nor the reporter mentioned.  Despite a decreasing enrollment (from 1,666 to 1,247), ASD’s Total Education Spending skyrocketed from $14.8 million for SY 2000-2001 to $22.0 million for SY 2007-2008; this figure was $20.6 million for SY 2012-2013 (1,195 students).