MONEY MONEY MONEY...money

Unfunded mandates are killing school district budgets across the country. Many may wonder why school districts have had to raise taxes without seeing any concrete programs advance or teacher salaries increase more than inflation. Here is the untold story regarding unfunded mandates and the impact they have on school districts like Franklin Regional that receive minimal federal and state funding.

An unfunded mandate occurs when Harrisburg and Washington DC demand local school districts follow a regulation without compensating the school district for the added costs of fulfilling the mandate. The overarching consequence is that school districts across the Commonwealth become smashed in between a rock and a hard place finding taxpayer dollars not being enough to compensate for the new costly mandates. These mandates prevent school boards from increasing any other expenditures within the local jurisdiction in order to keep up with the regulations. These mandates have grown exponentially over the past ten years with standardized testing and reporting procedures.

Let's look at reporting. Over the last eight years Harrisburg (c/o the Federal government) requires every school district to regularly upload massive quantities of data in a specific format. Most schools did not have the software or human resources to accomplish this and have had to spend millions of dollars upgrading computer systems and hiring individuals for maintaining and uploading all of this data. It's disturbing enough that no one knows all of that data on our children is being uploaded, processed, and distributed, but it is merely one of hundreds of mandates costing our schools millions of dollars that could be used for reducing class sizes, quality arts and humanities programs and innovative STEM education.

Roughly 30% of FR's total budget comes from Harrisburg and Washington DC yet we must follow 100% of these unfunded mandates. WHY? Are you thinking that we have local control? You'd be right in that the 10th Amendment DOES give us local rights and local control. Unfortunately, Harrisburg and Washington DC believe they can control us by hitting our pocketbooks with mandates. No more. This must change. I will work with a coalition of school boards to fight these unfunded mandates and restore local control over our schools.