Breaking PA budget news...

The new budget proposal by the Pennsylvania Republicans announced today looks much like the previous Senate Bill 850 for education.

A comparison of:

• the original budget proposed by the Governor (which is what DVSD planned on when passing the "0%" tax increase for 2009-2010),
  
• the revised Governor's proposal,
  
• the original Senate Bill 850 (which would result in a $2 million shortfall at DVSD, what I estimate to be the equivalent of an approximately 5.2% in increased property taxes) and
  
• the new Republican proposal (HRAC1)
  

...shows that the two sides are far apart on educational funding.

There is actually LESS money for education than in Senate Bill 850 in some areas.

Education starts on page 5 of the comparison.

I think it is far past time for the DVSD board to plan cuts to take us to a true 0% tax increase.

We will see what happens this Tuesday 7/14/2009 at the board budget meeting and this Thursday 7/16/2009 the regular DVSD Board meeting.We need to deal with this situation and stop pretending we will get all the funding in the DVSD budget. We will certainly be short. The only responsible path is it develop a list of cuts and enact them when the final PA budget passes.

What do you think the DVSD school directors should do? Wait? Take action? Keep hoping and do nothing?