Letters to the editor
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Gov. Corbett's budget will hurt children
Gov. Tom Corbett's budget plan ("Corbett Calls Budget Plan 'Lean and Demanding' " Feb. 8) leans on local school districts to make up for state funding deficits and demands that we all accept less for Pennsylvania's children. In Pennsylvania, what school districts spend per pupil can vary by up to $15,000. Local taxpayers cannot close that gap. There cannot be equal, quality education with these differences in spending. The governor's proposed budget would support this inequality.
Gov. Corbett is demanding that Pennsylvania think only in the short term and forget about a prosperous, healthy and forward-moving state. He wants us to forget the direct correlation between poor quality education, incarceration, lack of job readiness and poor health.
My three children attend what's been labeled an "affluent" school district. Even my district is facing tough choices in terms of staff reduction, increased class sizes and program modifications. Mt. Lebanon previously lost approximately $180 per pupil. Pittsburgh Public Schools lost approximately $560 per student; what will they do? This is not the public education I want for my children or any of Pennsylvania's children. I hope our legislators will reverse Gov. Corbett's short-sighted budget and restore the cuts to public education funding. Pennsylvania's future depends upon it.
LARA COSENTINO
Mt. Lebanon
Unjustified line item
How does budget-slasher Tom Corbett justify $2 million for a library for Sen. Arlen Specter when he cuts tens of thousands of poor people out of health care, demands excessive means-testing for welfare, takes another huge bite out of public higher education and lets public transportation atrophy?
Mr. Corbett finds money for prisons and tax breaks for shale gas companies -- and a vanity library for a political crony of his. He can at least ask the gas companies to pony up for Mr. Specter's library or maybe include it in the Corrections Department budget. Better yet, locate it at a state penitentiary where there will be a guaranteed supply of patrons.
BILL OMAN
Slippery Rock
Corbett is correct
Finally Gov. Tom Corbett has explained the story behind the education "cuts" that many are complaining about. What former Gov. Ed Rendell and his Democratic allies did was to artificially inflate the commonwealth's basic education budget by dumping a billion dollars of one-time federal stimulus money into it, and then cutting the state's contribution to that same budget.
First Published February 15, 2012 12:00 am
