State Rep. Lisa Borowski (D-168) joins the show to discuss public school funding in Pennsylvania. Borowski represents Radnor, Newtown, Edgmont and part of Middletown Township, covering the Radnor, Marple Newtown and Rose Tree Media school districts. She served on the Radnor School Board from 2011 to 2015 before her election to the House, where she is now in her second term and serves on the Health Committee.
The conversation opens with the structural problem: Pennsylvania covers a smaller share of K-12 education costs than nearly any other state, leaving the difference to local property taxes. Borowski describes what she saw as a school board member, noting that the poorest districts often carried the highest tax burdens, and recalling visits to facilities that she says would have prompted outrage in her own community.
On the pace of reform, Borowski argues the central obstacle is revenue. “You can’t get blood from a stone,” she says, calling for a new recurring revenue stream dedicated to education. She walks through the options currently in play in Harrisburg:
Digital ad tax. Passed the House and awaiting Senate action. Borowski is a proponent, arguing that if large tech platforms can target Pennsylvanians with advertising, the state should capture revenue from it.
Recreational cannabis. Held up in part over the sales mechanism and in part over remaining questions about health and impairment. Borowski would want revenue directed to both education and public transit.
Skill games. She says the state Supreme Court has set an October 13 deadline, after which unregulated machines would be removed. The House has left the next move to the Senate.
Severance tax. Pennsylvania remains the only major gas-producing state without one. Borowski cosponsors two bills but says passage is unlikely in the current legislature, and would require at minimum a Democratic trifecta. She recounts meeting a House appropriations chair at the Country Squire Diner in Broomall as a school board member to discuss using Marcellus Shale revenue for schools, and being told it would happen. It never did.
Delaware loophole. House-passed legislation closing it remains stalled, which Borowski attributes in part to lobbying influence.
The discussion turns to cyber charter tuition, where a House-passed reform bill that would have saved districts an estimated $600 million annually died in the Senate. Borowski argues cyber charters do not require the same per-student funding as brick-and-mortar schools, and notes the Auditor General found cyber charters spending on items unrelated to education.
Borowski then raises healthcare unprompted, calling Delaware County’s situation a crisis. She cites roughly 202,000 Pennsylvanians dropping coverage through Pennie and the ACA, and the resulting uncompensated care burden on hospitals. She discusses Riddle Hospital, where her father practiced for four decades, and state funding the delegation has secured for emergency department staffing. On EMS, she notes Crozer’s closure left approximately 51% of Delaware County without coverage, and that Pennsylvania places the obligation on municipalities.
Her first priority would be an on-time state budget, since districts must adopt their own budgets by June 30 regardless of whether Harrisburg has acted. She also suggests Senate Democrats have had fewer opportunities to advance their priorities than the House majority has.
