BY ERICA BURG AND SUSAN SPICKA

From 10 a.m. to noon on April 25, we are inviting parents who care about education to come to Harrisburg for the state’s largest school bake sale.

We hope that parents statewide will join us at the Capitol, bring a card table and baked goods and signs indicating precisely how much your school district must try to raise to meet the draconian cuts in state education funding proposed in Gov. Corbett’s budget.

We need to send a clear message to our governor and our representatives in Harrisburg: There are not enough cookies in the state of Pennsylvania to protect our children from the damage that will be done to the commonwealth’s schools.

There are not enough raffles, yard sales, spaghetti dinners, car washes, candy sales, penny socials or pancake breakfasts to make up for Gov. Corbett’s wholesale assault on public education.

The cuts are deep and will impact on the quality of education in every corner of the commonwealth. These are cuts totaling more than $800 million that will result in the loss of talented teachers and vital programs. These are cuts that will lead to larger class sizes. These are cuts that will require many local districts to impose new building-use fees and pay-for-play requirements that will deny community groups and children access to co-curricular activities.

These are cuts that fall disproportionately on poor and rural school districts that depend most heavily on state assistance. These are cuts that will force a generation of children to receive an education inferior to that of their brothers and sisters who came before them. And — most of all — these cuts are wholly unnecessary.

We readily acknowledge that the nation is still emerging from a recession and that tax revenues are down. But the budget “crisis” that Pennsylvania faces is a crisis of our own making, and much of the budget shortfall could easily be recouped with two simple steps.

First, make corporations pay their fair share of our state’s tax burden. Gov. Corbett has promised not to raise taxes, but he should take steps to make those who are not paying their taxes pay their fair share.

In Pennsylvania, 70 percent of corporations do not pay taxes due to accounting tricks that allow them to hide revenue generated in Pennsylvania in other low-tax states where they operate. Pennsylvania’s antiquated law allows the most profitable, multinational corporations to shirk their taxes while law-abiding mom-and-pop businesses and working families of our communities faithfully pay what is asked of them. That stinks.

Simply by closing this large, well-known tax loophole, the state could quickly and easily bring hundreds of millions of dollars into its coffers from profits generated in Pennsylvania by corporations who now choose to pay accountants and lawyer fees rather than support the communities where they operate.

Second, a severance tax on vast natural gas reserves being extracted from the state’s Marcellus Shale region would bring an estimated $200 million per year in new revenues. The gas is here, and the gas companies have no choice but to come to Pennsylvania if they want to tap this resource.

Pennsylvania is the only major natural gas-producing state that does not have a severance tax. Even such tax-leery states as Texas, Oklahoma and Wyoming have one. There is no evidence from other states that this negatively impacts the development of the natural gas industry, and it would generate much needed revenue for the state.

There are other choices on the table, but the governor has decided to punish the state’s children and force them to bear a disproportionate burden for his preference to ensure that the wealthy and powerful multinational corporations do not share in the costs of our society’s most important functions. The governor has said repeatedly that his budget makes tough choices because he must focus on the state’s future. Isn’t the state’s future sitting in our public school classrooms right now?

Americans have been told time and time again that taxes are bad, and that government is too large. In this case, taxes open the doors to the future for our children and allow them to reach their full potential as human beings and as productive citizens of the commonwealth. Good schools attract businesses and hardworking families to our communities and produce individuals prepared for tomorrow’s workforce. Investing in education is good economic policy.

We are outraged with the priorities being taken by Gov. Corbett, and we are tired of feeling that there is nothing we can do to express our deep concern for our children's future. There are not enough cookies in Pennsylvania to undo the damage the governor intends to inflict on our schools, our communities and our children.



ERICA BURG AND SUSAN SPICKA write from Shippensburg. They both have children in the public school system and belong to their school PTOs. therearenotenoughcookiesinpa@yahoo.com