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Pennsylvania bishops urge funding for public schools
2003-030-5
2/13/2003
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[Episcopal News Service]
The five Episcopal bishops of Pennsylvania want lawmakers to increase state funding of public schools to end the gap between wealthy and poor school districts. The bishops issued a pastoral letter, read in Pennsylvania Episcopal churches February 9, encouraging parishioners to support more state funding.
'As public education has increased its reliance on local taxes, the Commonwealth's funding for our children's education has decreased from 55 to 35 percent. The practical result is an unforgiving gap--up to $8,500 difference per child--in the amount wealthy and poor districts provide for public education,' the statement said. 'The gap suggests that we tolerate economic segregation, that a substandard education is adequate for the poor and near poor.'
The letter, 'Seeking Justice in Funding Public Education,' challenged parishioners to 'support a system of taxation that decreases reliance on local property or wage taxes and returns the state to at least a 50 percent partnership in the funding of our public schools.'
'Our participation in the movement, Good Schools Pennsylvania, to support, strengthen and reform our public schools is based on both our religious belief that every person is created in God's own image and our civic responsibility to provide our children with equal opportunity in public education,' the statement concluded. 'For the love of God and for the sake of the children who have been left behind, please join us in attempting to reverse this spiral of inequity.'
The letter was signed by Bishops Charles E. Bennison Jr. (Pennsylvania); Clarence N. Coleridge (Assisting, Pennsylvania); Michael W. Creighton (Central Pennsylvania); Robert W. Duncan (Pittsburgh); Paul V. Marshall (Bethlehem); Robert D. Rowley, Jr.(Northwest Pennsylvania); and Henry Scriven (Assisting, Pittsburgh).
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