Gov. Wolf's Prison Speech: Educate, Don't Incarcerate

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has a plan for reducing crime and spending taxpayer money on something more productive than prison.

Education.

That was his message on Wednesday at a speech outside the state prison in Harrisburg, and it was the essence of an announcement Thursday which outlined a $400 million basic education funding increase in his 2015-2016 budget.

Nodding to the prison, Wolf said that improving the education of young children was needed “If we want people in Pennsylvania to have fulfilled lives and not end up in places like this.”

The specifics of the plan come from educational professionals around the state, Wolf said.

“I have traveled across Pennsylvania and listened to educators and administrators detail their plans to ensure additional education funding is invested in the classroom to benefit our children,” Wolf said in a press release Thursday.

On his website, Wolf outlines the details of his proposal and how many districts would be impacted by certain measures:

• 197 school districts in Pennsylvania will use the funding to maintain or expand high-quality early childhood education or pre-kindergarten and full-day kindergarten programs.
• 98 school districts will apply the funding toward reducing class sizes in elementary school classes.
• 87 school districts will restore programs and personnel that districts were forced to eliminate as a result of massive cuts over the past four years. Districts will bring back guidance counselors and librarians and restore extra-curricular programs designed to enhance learning outside the classroom.

Critics of the measure say that it will be hard to come up with the funds to achieve what Wolf wants to achieve. Wolf said that he plans to pay for the budget with a severance tax on natural gas.

Other local and national lawmakers applauded the speech and Wolf’s points.

“Exactly right: let’s invest in early childhood education,” U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), a prison reform advocate, wrote on his Facebook page, posting a link to the speech.

The Department of Education is currently in the process of reviewing Wolf’s plan for each individual school district. Feedback on the plan is due June 15.

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