Allentown Schools Plans for 4th Round of Layoffs & Tax Increases +$25 million/yr charter costs

[JPZenger]

http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/allentown/index.ssf/2014/01/early_allentown_school_budget.html#incart_river

http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/allentown/index.ssf/2013/11/charter_school_funding_leaves.html

The Allentown School District, like many urban school districts in PA, is planning for their fourth straight year of layoffs of teachers and other staff. They also are planning for their fourth straight year of tax increases, which is forecast to be 9% next year.

Meanwhile, the School District is forced to pay rapidly increasing charter school costs, which will reach $22 million a year by the end of this school year, and which are projected to reach $25 million for next school year.

Excerpt:

"Districts are required to pay charter schools for their employer pension contribution as part of the current charter school funding formula.

But the state also reimburses charters up to 50 percent of that contribution, allowing the schools to "double-dip" half of their pension contributions, board members said.

That simple policy flaw is unnecessarily costing school district taxpayers across the state an extra $50 million a year, board members said.

"The sad fact is, especially for a distressed urban district like Allentown, we are being left with the kids who are in the most trouble, who need the most help," Boardmember Armstrong said."

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For many years, PA reimbursed public school districts for part of the cost of constructing new schools and to do major rehabs of existing older schools. During the Corbett years, the State has refused to accept any new applications for reimbursements. One of the reasons is that tens of millions of dollars a year from that State School Construction fund are being diverted to reimburse charter schools for their building leases.

[Pat Riot]

1. They are brilliantly evil.

Why don't people see it?

Bust the unions by laying off so many regular public school teachers, line their cronies' pockets with diverted taxpayer funds to charter schools. Also, increasing the flow on the school-to-privatized prison pipeline.

[JPZenger]

2. Evil cackle

Yes, our little evil plan is coming to fruition. Starve the urban public schools so that parents have little choice except to transfer their kids to for-profit tax-payer funded schools run by our rich donors.

Then, we can starve the urban public schools even more because the kids that are left in them have completely powerless parents. Many of them don't even speak English and almost none vote.

Haaaaa-haaa-haaa. This is going to be eeex-celent