How Would Gov. Wolf's Education Budget Affect Hatboro-Horsham Schools?

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf was in Phoenixville Tuesday morning campaigning for his controversial budget plan and education initiatives that remain under intensive fire from Republicans.

His stop at Phoenixville Middle School was part of his “Schools That Teach” statewide tour trying to raise support for his budget that Republican state Congressional lawmakers say will raise taxes too high.

Wolf has said that a severance tax on natural gas would pay for his education budget.

The Commonwealth Foundation, a pro-free market and limited government organization that is campaigning against Wolf’s budget, said that wasn’t true.

“It’s not dedicated to education—it’s earmarked for alternative energy subsidies, among other forms of corporate welfare,” the organization said in a press release accompanying Wolf’s appearance in Phoenixville.

State Rep. Warren Kampf, who spoke at Phoenixville Middle School after Wolf, said that Wolf’s budget raised taxes too high and was “bad” for the area.

Wolf said that education spending needed to happen now.

“You can’t keep taking money out of education and get to a good place,” he said.

Under Wolf’s tax plan, funding to the Hatboro-Horsham School District would increase in 2015-2016 by about $334,000.

However, that’s significantly less than districts like Lansdale and Phoenixville (each about $1 million) and many other local school districts. And it’s almost nothing compared to Norristown’s increase of $2.2 million.

Hatboro-Horsham operates within a much smaller budget than those districts, though, which explains some of the disparity.

Funding to Hatboro-Horsham would increase from $6,866,907 last year to $7,201,312, according to the Schools That Teach page.

That would include about $97,000 in increased funding for special education programs.

Statistics on the Schools That Teach page show a small decline over the last three years in percentage of students who were “proficient” or “advanced” in math and literature at Hatboro-Horsham.

Since 2012, the math proficiency rate has dropped from 92 percent to 88 percent, and the reading proficiency rate has dropped from 88 percent to 85 percent.