Pottstown Continues Fight for Fair School Funding As it Adopts $63 Million Budget with 3.5% Tax Hike

Inadequate Photos by Evan Brandt

ONE YEAR IN: At left, Pottstown High School students Audrey Morton Cole Riulli, two of 14 students who completed the Early College program, are joined by sponsors and officials from Montgomery County Community College and the Foundation for Pottstown Education. with an average GPA of 3.4, those 14 students have completed the first year of college at Pottstown's community college campus at no cost to them, thanks to the $286,000 raised this year by the foundation, a 23.5 percent increase over last year. 

As tends to happen at this time of the year, news of school districts focuses on budgets and their adoption.

Last night the Pottstown School Board unanimously adopted a $62.7 million budget that will raise taxes by 3.5 percent to make up a $1 million shortfall caused by the removal of Pottstown Hospital from the tax rolls.

But if the "fair funding formula" adopted but not funded by the hypocrites in the Pennsylvania legislature had been in place, that loss would not have been a problem.

Instead, Pottstown Schools would enjoy a $13 million boost, putting them for the first time in decades on equal footing with the districts whose students start on third base and pat themselves on the back for all their home runs.

To their credit, the Pottstown community, and particularly Schools Superintendent Stephen Rodriguez, are not taking this situation lying down.

Check out this video of Rodriguez speaking at a rally in the capitol Wednesday:


School Board member Emanuel Wilkerson said "I was raised in the Baptist church and Mr. Rodriguez was bringing the fire. You can't watch this not have goosebumps."

Rodriguez, Wilkerson and school board members Kim Stilwell and John Armato have been to Harrisburg to lobby against this unjust so many times now, they're thinking about renting a parking space.

On Wednesday they were there with the advocacy group POWER for the group's "100% Funding Day of Action." Power calls the uneven distribution of state education funding "educational apartheid."

The state budget now before the Pennsylvania State Budget will distribute just 8.8 percent of the new money allocated to education via the formula.

Although the rally was pushing for distributing ALL education money via the formula, Stilwell said that while she agrees, political realities have to be recognized.

MUSIC TO THEIR EARS: Tom Kelly, right, from Zeswitz 

Music, was at the board meeting Thursday to give 

the district's music staff another "Best Communities 

for Music Education" award from the National 

Association of Music Merchants.

As a result, the board unanimously adopted a resolution supporting a bill proposed by another advocacy group, Equity First and co-sponsored by all three of Pottstown's local state legislators, that would funnel 75 percent of all new education funding to Pennsylvania's underfunded districts, meaning 25 percent would go the over-funded districts, ensuring they still see an increase, albeit a small one.

"Dribs and drabs of more school funding just means more of the same for the next 20 years," Stilwell said.

In other business, the board adopted a new dress code policy which will set school-level dress codes, i.e. one for elementary, one for middle school and one for high school.

According to the policy, it will be guided by questions like "is what the student wearing disruptive?" "Would it be appropriate in a work environment?" Is student's dress reflecting a positive image of the school district?

More on that in later issues of The Mercury.

In the meantime, here are the Tweets from the meeting.

Fighting for Fair School Funding