PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A Philadelphia children’s advocacy group says the lives of children in the commonwealth will improve if Gov. Josh Shapiro’s proposed $51.5 billion budget is passed.
Shapiro’s proposal calls for infusing a historic billion dollars into Pennsylvania’s public schools. Donna Cooper, executive director of Philly-based Children First, says this will help public schools obtain the resources they need, especially in poor areas including Philadelphia, Bristol, Norristown and Pottstown.
“These are districts that, for years, have not had sufficient resources to hire reading specialists and tutors and enough teachers, and God forbid, music teachers or art teachers or fixed broken bathrooms,” she said.
The budget also includes protections for Medicaid — which insures 40% of kids in Pennsylvania — and provides money for after school programming, as well as a $1,000 raise for child care workers. Cooper believes that raise is long overdue.
“Hundreds of children are on a waiting list for child care in Philadelphia, but there's no teacher in the classroom to teach them or support them,” she said. “This will be the first time the Pennsylvania legislature, at the request of the governor, is going to put money into wages for child care workers.”
While Cooper says all of this is tremendous, she adds there are still a few areas for kids that need attention, such as lead paint remediation.
“The budget doesn't do anything on lead paint poisoning, and unfortunately, about 10,000 kids a year are still being poisoned by lead paint in the state,” she said.
She also hopes the governor will lend his support to Pennsylvania passing a paid family and medical leave program, “so that mothers don't have to go back to work three days after having a baby because they don't have paid time off.”
Republicans in the state legislature, however, have called his budget — which also includes more money for universities, tax breaks for power plant construction and nearly $300 million for mass transit — unsustainable and “a fantasy.” They say the estimated gains from his proposals to legalize, regulate and tax recreational marijuana and “skill games” are overinflated.
KYW Newsradio’s Jim Melwert contributed to this story.