This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.
by Mary Wilson for NewsWorks
As Gov. Corbett prepares his state budget proposal, Pennsylvania House Democrats are calling on him to make education a higher priority.
The call for more attention to education has been a constant refrain since 2011, when Corbett’s first budget made deep cuts to school funding.
Republicans argue that the reductions are the direct result of the disappearance of federal stimulus dollars that had been used to prop up education budgets under former Gov. Ed Rendell.
In 2011, lawmakers also abandoned use of a school funding formula intended to smooth out funding disparities between school districts. And House Minority Leader Frank Dermody is pressing for a vote on a plan to return to such a formula.