News & Brews May 14, 2024
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Report: How public schools discriminate based on address
A new report from yes. every kid. notes. “Decades after a slew of civil rights laws were passed to protect Americans from discrimination based on race, ethnicity, or religion, there is still a persistent, prevalent, and legal type of discrimination that millions of families face when trying to access public schools – discrimination based on a family’s residential address.” The report gives a state-by-state breakdown of “barriers to equal public school access.” (Pa. does not fare well.) And it offers three recommendations for “creating a boundaryless educational landscape by 2030.”
Pa. Senate Approps Chair talks budget, education
Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Scott Martin (Lancaster County) addressed the Pa. Press Club yesterday, where he tackled topics ranging from education and energy to economic growth and the state budget. He reiterated the Senate-passed legislation that would reduce the state’s personal income tax from 3.07% to 2.8%. And on education, he noted, “The ultimate form of accountability and education is when you have vested parents who are saying, ‘This isn’t working for my kid, and I want to put them in something that works for them.’ That will never falter and will continue to be our push.”
Biden’s plan to win Pa. ‘on the margins’
The new publication NOTUS (News of the United States), which is a project of the Allbritton Journalism Institute, reports that President Biden’s “campaign is putting more resources earlier than ever before into counties he’ll almost certainly lose.” But “Democrats say there’s a logic to it.” While Biden’s support in Pa. is largely in urban centers as well as nearby suburbs, in a super close race, votes in rural counties could be make-or-break deciders.
Rozzi criticizes Pa. for not acting on sexual abuse amendment, but he could have advanced it
The Post-Gazette reports that Democrat state Rep. Mark Rozzi (Berks County) is criticizing Harrisburg’s failure to “allow child sex abuse survivors a two-year window in which to file otherwise outdated lawsuits.” But when Rozzi was House Speaker, he had the chance to advance the Senate’s version of the measure but refused as it would also allow voters to weigh in on voter ID and regulatory reform. While Rozzi said the sexual abuse amendment was his top priority, he was unwilling to give voters a say on other issues as part of achieving his top priority.
A look a gifts lawmakers received in 2023
Spotlight Pa. reports that “Top Pennsylvania state legislators accepted nearly $30,000 in travel expenses in 2023, often from groups that have interests before the state, newly filed ethics reports show.” For context, this is $30K spread out among many lawmakers.