POTTSTOWN – Pottstown Schools Superintendent Stephen Rodriguez will go anywhere and talk to anyone about the fight for fair public school funding.
Given that the Pottstown School District is underfunded by more than $13 million every year by a state funding system that favors districts with more white students over districts with fewer white students, that’s not too surprising.
But his outspokenness has resulted in him being elected to a position that will give him a broader state-wide platform for his advocacy. Rodriguez is the new president of the Pennsylvania League of Urban Schools, often referred to as PLUS.
And he is not alone in representing Southeast Pennsylvania in the organization.
Christopher Dorner, the superintendent of the Norristown Area School District, is the group’s new secretary. Joseph Roy, the superintendent of the Bethlehem Area School District, is the group’s new treasurer.
Once an independent organization, PLUS merged with a larger statewide organization known as the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators or PASA in 2015. The two groups felt it was better to pool resources and not duplicate efforts, said Rodriguez.
Rodriguez was unopposed for the position but said in an interview with MediaNews Group that is likely because he announced his intention to run last year when he was serving as secretary.
“When the time for nominations came, I was the only candidate,” he said.
Although the post comes with a full plate, school board member John Armato, who is also the district’s unpaid director of community relations, noted that plate is part of Rodriguez’s charge in his contract. The fifth item on Rodriguez’s list of goals approved by the school board is advocacy for fairer school funding.
“I ran it by the school board and they feel it is in line with my evaluation goals,” Rodriguez said.
“I can think of no better person whose passion, effectiveness and persistence, makes him the right person to carry the flag for fair and equitable funding,” Armato said.
“Urban districts deal with higher levels of adverse childhood experiences, juvenile delinquency, and lower achievement scores than the state averages. Simply trying to cope with our current resources is not sustainable. So we advocate,” Rodriguez wrote in a newsletter sent out to PLUS members.
In addition to fair funding, following the fair funding formula the Pennsylvania General Assembly has adopted but uses for only a tiny fraction of the education funding it delivers every year, PLUS has two other advocacy priorities, said Rodriguez.
The first is “cyber-charter and charter school reform,” said Rodriguez. “Any kind of serious reform measure will mean millions of public dollars going back to urban schools, which are hit particularly hard by cyber-charter tuition.”
The other is special education reforms. The way the system is currently set up, said Rodriguez, “allows for predatory practices by the lawyers that specialize in this in a way that punishes the school districts. And because urban schools have the highest percentage of special education students and the least ability to pay, we get hit with a double whammy,” he said.
Rodriguez says he hopes, with the help of other urban school officials, to make progress on these three reforms in Harrisburg.
In Southeast Pennsylvania, urban school districts include Pottstown, Norristown, Coatesville Area, Southeast Delco, William Penn, Chester-Upland, Philadelphia and Reading.
