PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Democrats and Philadelphia school advocates are pushing for the adoption of Gov. Tom Wolf's education budget, saying it would provide a badly-needed boost for underfunded schools.
Elected officials and Philadelphia school leaders gathered at Martin Luther King High School on Monday to call on the state legislature to approve Wolf's budget, which includes an additional $1.3 billion for K-12 education.
The Wolf budget would run all $6.4 billion in basic education money through the state's "fair funding formula" that takes poverty into account. Right now, only 11% is distributed through the formula.
Speaking to the crowd, Mayor Jim Kenney said education is the only way out of poverty. "Just imagine over the last generation if we had a full funding formula," he said.
"The problems that we're dealing with every single day in gun violence and homicide, and drug addition and opioid addiction and homelessness," he added, "all of that would have been taken care of by itself because people would have been educated when they left high school."
The Wolf proposal would guarantee that all Pennsylvania school districts would get an increase, even those where enrollment is declining. Democratic state Sen. Vincent Hughes, who organized the event, questioned why the Republican-controlled legislature would object to the Wolf plan.
"Republican school districts in Pennsylvania get extra funding," Hughes said. "So they've got to ask themselves the question — why would they vote against their own self-interests?"
The Wolf budget would raise income taxes on high-earners to pay for the school increases.