Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > How the GOP and Education Privatizers Are Using Charters to Bleed
Pennsylvania Schools Dry
________________________________________
How the GOP and Education Privatizers Are Using Charters to Bleed
Pennsylvania Schools Dry
By Jeff Bryant [1] / Salon [2]
September 11, 2015
As schools across Pennsylvania open their doors for the new school year,
there's one district in the state where teachers will be hard at work even
though they're not likely to get paid.
The teachers are actually already on the job, having reported for work a
week early as originally expected. But when the district's administration
announced it could not meet a scheduled payroll on September 9, a week after
classes start, the teachers - along with janitors, nurses, and other school
personnel - held an impromptu meeting and voted to temporarily forego pay.
The teachers are employed by the financially strapped school district of
Chester Upland, located about 20 miles west of Philadelphia. Years of
deliberate under-funding by the state, coupled with policies that favor the
rapid expansion of publicly funded but privately operated charter schools,
are bleeding the district. The dedication of committed and caring educators
seems to be one of the few forces binding the shattered school community
together.
"We aren't broken," says Dariah Jackson, one of the teachers working for no
pay tells Salon in a phone interview. Jackson, a Special Education and Life
Skills Support teacher in grades 3-5, says, "I'm in my classroom, as are my
colleagues, ready for the students to walk through the door next week."
When asked how long is "temporary" in their resolve to work with no pay,
Jackson says, "No one has set a time limit for now. We have to be here for
our students. They need a place to go."
But while Jackson and her colleagues show their determination to meet the
needs of the students, there are forces acting in Chester Upland, and across
Pennsylvania, focused on anything but that.
School Breakage 101
"Chester Upland is broke," explains Wythe Keever, spokesman for the
Pennsylvania State Education Association. "Actually, they're a lot worse off
than broke," he tells Salon. "They have an operating budget deficit in
excess of $20 million that is expected by the end of the year to go beyond
$40 million."
"The school district is in danger of not existing," says Jeff Sheridan, a
spokesman for Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, in a report by Lyndsey Layton of
The Washington Post [3].
What's not helping for sure is an ongoing imbroglio over Pennsylvania's
state budget. Legislators and Wolf have been unable to come to an agreement
on the state's fiscal responsibilities, delaying budget completion for over
50 days. What's the fight about? Education funding [4]. The newly elected
Democratic governor insists on increasing school funding and correcting
unfair distributions - particularly those that go to online "cyber" charter
schools [5] - while an entrenched Republican legislature continues to
exhibit reluctance to adequately and fairly fund the state's schools.
So school districts across the state are having to dig deeper into their own
local resources to fund the reopening of schools. Districts like Chester
Upland, that are heavily reliant on state aid, simply don't have coffers to
dig into.
But there are also long term "structural problems," explains Keever.
As Layton recounts in her report, "Chester Upland's financial problems date
to 1994, when it was first classified by the state as being in 'economic
distress." The district has been in and out of state receivership since.
"A similar financial collapse occurred in the district in 2012," Layton
continues, "and the teachers also agreed to work without pay then. In the
end, a federal judge ordered the state to pay the district, and lawmakers
arranged a bailout, so that employees' paychecks were just a couple of days
late."
One of those "structural problems" is that Chester Upland is a school
district serving a lot of families living in poverty. According to Wikipedia
[6], in 2009, "the District residents' per capita income [7] was $13,521,
while the median family income [8] was $30,900." Both figures are way below
national and Pennsylvania state averages. Only 10 percent of the people who
live in the school district have college degrees.
Schools that serve communities that are so disproportionally poor are bound
to be financially at risk in a system such as America's where the financial
base for schools starts with local property taxes. But the state of
Pennsylvania compounds the problem by deliberately under-funding the schools
in the state that are most in need of money.
As Rutgers University professor Bruce Baker [9] explains on his blog, "the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has among the least equitable state school
finance systems in the country [10]," giving less state and local revenue to
the state's highest needs schools like Chester Upland.
A national report released by the U.S. Department of Education earlier this
year spotlighted the Quaker State as being among the worst of the 23 states
across the country that distribute more education money to richer school
districts and less money to those with the least means.
As The Post's Emma Brown [11] wrote when the report was released,
"Pennsylvania's state and local per-pupil spending in its poorest school
districts is 33 percent lower than per-pupil spending in the state's most
affluent school districts, the highest differential in the country."
Charters Sap the District
Charter schools add to the financial burden placed on resource-starved
schools like those in Chester Upland.
According to a local news outlet [12], teachers in Chester Upland "say the
district's ongoing financial problems are because of the state's funding
formula, specifically what the school district is required to pay to charter
schools. The school district receives about $16,000 for children with
learning disabilities from the state, but it is required to give the charter
schools $40,000 for each student listed with a learning disability."
"It's absolutely an unsustainable expense," Keever explains. The Chester
Upland district now pays about $64 million, over half of its budget, to the
charter schools - more money than what the school district gets from the
state.
Professor Baker, a school finance expert, says this method of financing
special education in charter schools "is poorly conceived, creates perverse
incentives for charter school operators, and inappropriately drains
disproportionate resources from sending districts."
Further, as Keever explains, "When students and funding are drawn away from
a traditional public school, the traditional public school can't reduce
their overhead because they have fixed costs. They have to operate the buses
and feed the students and pay the light and water bill. Charter schools
taking away a few students from different grade levels doesn't produce any
savings. You still have to staff the same number of classrooms."
A Special Education Scam
To be fair, charter schools, which have been expanding over the years, now
educate about half of the students in the district. But there are good
reasons to believe the charter schools have turned these payments for
special education services into a profit center.
"The charter schools are submitting bills for students with special learning
that are $10,000-17,000 more than what neighboring school districts are
paying.," Keever points out.
Indeed, Valerie Strauss [13], on her blog at The Washington Post, points to
a report from Chester Upland's state-appointed receiver, Francis Barnes, who
documents how the charter schools seem to mine the local district of
low-cost special education students while leaving the traditional schools
with students who have the most severe disabilities. He points to data
showing the district's charter schools tends to serve high proportions of
low-cost special needs students - those with speech and hearing
disabilities, for instance - while serving low proportions of high-cost
special needs students, such as those with autism or emotional problems.
"Payments to the charters are absolutely more than what it costs to educate
these children," Keever contends. "Many of the children designated special
needs in the charters are actually receiving low-cost services that the
charters are billing at $40,000."
Charter Fraud Is Rampant in Pennsylvania
It's not at all hard to believe there might be something fishy about a
charter school operation in Pennsylvania. Last year, a report [14], "Fraud
and Financial Mismanagement in Pennsylvania's Charter Schools," found
charter school officials in the state have defrauded at least $30 million
intended for school children since 1997.
The report found an administrator who diverted $2.6 million in school funds
to a church property he also operated. Another charter school chief was
caught spending millions in school funds to bail out other nonprofits
associated with the school. A pair of charter school operators stole more
than $900,000 from the school by using fraudulent invoices, and a cyber
school entrepreneur diverted $8 million of school funds for houses, a
Florida condominium, and an airplane.
Because Pennsylvania spends over a billion dollars a year on charter
schools, the $30 million documented in this study is likely the minimum
possible amount.
Another report revealed how Pennsylvania charters across the state had gamed
the system for special education funding. The report found in 2013, public
schools paid out $350 million for charters to educate special education
students but the charter schools spent only $150 million on special
education services, resulting in a $200 million profit [15] for the charter
industry.
None of this evidence of financial fraud has been uncovered by state
agencies overseeing the charter schools. The evidence has been brought to
light by whistleblowers, media coverage, and watchdog groups - not by state
auditors who have a history of not effectively detecting or preventing
fraud. And charter schools, which self-report their enrollments to the
district and the department of education, can operate for years without fear
of an audit.
Charter Operators Get Mansions While Teachers Can't Get Paid
What needs to change, at the very least, is the funding formula for how
charter schools are paid for special education services.
The Pennsylvania State Education Association has presented recommendations
[16] for changing the state's charter school law, that include fixing the
special education inequities, enforcing some financial transparency on
charters, and capping charter school undesignated fund balances.
To his credit, Governor Wolf has taken steps [17] to correct the funding
formulas for special education in a way that would help cash strapped
districts like Chester Upland. The charter school industry, unfortunately,
has fought him at every step, and Wolf's latest proposal was rejected by a
Pennsylvania district court [18].
In Chester Upland specifically, "The charter schools have accumulated
massive fund balances," due to gaming the state's charter funding system,
Keever contends. He points to one charter in particular, Chester Community
Charter School.
Chester Community Charter, the largest charter in the district, is managed
by a company owned by Vahan Gureghian. Gureghian, an attorney and prodigious
donor to Republican politicians [19], recently put on the market his Palm
Beach, Florida mansion listed at $84.5 million. The "French inspired" house
[20] features 35,000 feet of living space, a bowling alley, and a moat.
"It's difficult to pin down how much the Chester Community Charter School
and others have profited," Keever admits. "The charters have refused to
honor right to know requests under the state's open records laws, so there's
little to no way to document how much the management company that runs that
charter is actually taking out."
While the full extent of charter school profiting remains a question,
nevertheless, Gureghian and his expansive Palm Beach estate strike quite a
sharp contrast to Dariah Jackson and the rest of the Chester Upland
educators willing to work for no pay.
Speaking from her small classroom, in a beleaguered school, in a
long-struggling community, Jackson remains defiant. "I want everyone to know
we care about our students. The paycheck is not what's foremost in our
minds.
"Now we just need our elected officials to act."
For the students' sake, let's hope they do.
Jeff Bryant is an associate fellow at Campaign for America's Future and the
editor of the Education Opportunity Network website. Prior to joining
OurFuture.org he was one of the principal writers for Open Left.
Share on Facebook Share
Share on Twitter Tweet
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [21]
[22]
________________________________________
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/education/how-gop-and-education-privatizers-are-usin
g-charters-bleed-pennsylvania-schools-dry
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/jeff-bryant
[2] http://www.salon.com
[3]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/in-a-bankrupt-pa-school-distri
ct-teachers-plan-to-work-for-free/2015/08/28/0332898e-4dba-11e5-84df-923b3ef
1a64b_story.html
[4]
http://www.ydr.com/politics/ci_28664643/wolf-lawmakers-resume-talks-gop-offe
r-school-aid
[5] http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2015/05/pa-cyber-whine-party.html
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_Upland_School_District
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per_capita_income
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_family_income
[9]
http://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2012/06/05/the-commonwealth-triple-scr
ew-special-education-funding-charter-school-payments-in-pennsylvania/
[10] http://www.schoolfundingfairness.org/
[11]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/03/12/in-23-states-richer-s
chool-districts-get-more-local-funding-than-poorer-districts/
[12]
http://6abc.com/education/chester-upland-teachers-agree-to-work-without-pay/
960004/
[13]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/08/31/is-this-any-w
ay-to-run-a-school-district/
[14]
http://populardemocracy.org/sites/default/files/charter-schools-PA-Fraud.pdf
[15] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRw5oO02KpA
[16]
http://www.psea.org/uploadedFiles/LegislationAndPolitics/Solutions_That_Work
/STW-UpdatePACharterSchoolLaw.pdf
[17]
http://articles.philly.com/2015-08-24/news/65773715_1_public-charter-schools
-robert-fayfich-pennsylvania-coalition
[18]
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/20150826_Judge_rejects_Wolf_challeng
e_to_charter_funding.html#FaBkHDktlZRAO83z.99
[19] http://powerplayers-pa.herokuapp.com/donors/vahan-gureghian-i/
[20]
http://www.palmbeachdailynews.com/news/news/local/north-end-mansion-listed-a
t-845m/nkhyf/
[21] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on How the GOP and
Education Privatizers Are Using Charters to Bleed Pennsylvania Schools Dry
[22] http://www.alternet.org/
[23] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > How the GOP and Education Privatizers Are Using Charters to Bleed
Pennsylvania Schools Dry
How the GOP and Education Privatizers Are Using Charters to Bleed
Pennsylvania Schools Dry
By Jeff Bryant [1] / Salon [2]
September 11, 2015
As schools across Pennsylvania open their doors for the new school year,
there's one district in the state where teachers will be hard at work even
though they're not likely to get paid.
The teachers are actually already on the job, having reported for work a
week early as originally expected. But when the district's administration
announced it could not meet a scheduled payroll on September 9, a week after
classes start, the teachers - along with janitors, nurses, and other school
personnel - held an impromptu meeting and voted to temporarily forego pay.
The teachers are employed by the financially strapped school district of
Chester Upland, located about 20 miles west of Philadelphia. Years of
deliberate under-funding by the state, coupled with policies that favor the
rapid expansion of publicly funded but privately operated charter schools,
are bleeding the district. The dedication of committed and caring educators
seems to be one of the few forces binding the shattered school community
together.
"We aren't broken," says Dariah Jackson, one of the teachers working for no
pay tells Salon in a phone interview. Jackson, a Special Education and Life
Skills Support teacher in grades 3-5, says, "I'm in my classroom, as are my
colleagues, ready for the students to walk through the door next week."
When asked how long is "temporary" in their resolve to work with no pay,
Jackson says, "No one has set a time limit for now. We have to be here for
our students. They need a place to go."
But while Jackson and her colleagues show their determination to meet the
needs of the students, there are forces acting in Chester Upland, and across
Pennsylvania, focused on anything but that.
School Breakage 101
"Chester Upland is broke," explains Wythe Keever, spokesman for the
Pennsylvania State Education Association. "Actually, they're a lot worse off
than broke," he tells Salon. "They have an operating budget deficit in
excess of $20 million that is expected by the end of the year to go beyond
$40 million."
"The school district is in danger of not existing," says Jeff Sheridan, a
spokesman for Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, in a report by Lyndsey Layton of
The Washington Post [3].
What's not helping for sure is an ongoing imbroglio over Pennsylvania's
state budget. Legislators and Wolf have been unable to come to an agreement
on the state's fiscal responsibilities, delaying budget completion for over
50 days. What's the fight about? Education funding [4]. The newly elected
Democratic governor insists on increasing school funding and correcting
unfair distributions - particularly those that go to online "cyber" charter
schools [5] - while an entrenched Republican legislature continues to
exhibit reluctance to adequately and fairly fund the state's schools.
So school districts across the state are having to dig deeper into their own
local resources to fund the reopening of schools. Districts like Chester
Upland, that are heavily reliant on state aid, simply don't have coffers to
dig into.
But there are also long term "structural problems," explains Keever.
As Layton recounts in her report, "Chester Upland's financial problems date
to 1994, when it was first classified by the state as being in 'economic
distress." The district has been in and out of state receivership since.
"A similar financial collapse occurred in the district in 2012," Layton
continues, "and the teachers also agreed to work without pay then. In the
end, a federal judge ordered the state to pay the district, and lawmakers
arranged a bailout, so that employees' paychecks were just a couple of days
late."
One of those "structural problems" is that Chester Upland is a school
district serving a lot of families living in poverty. According to Wikipedia
[6], in 2009, "the District residents' per capita income [7] was $13,521,
while the median family income [8] was $30,900." Both figures are way below
national and Pennsylvania state averages. Only 10 percent of the people who
live in the school district have college degrees.
Schools that serve communities that are so disproportionally poor are bound
to be financially at risk in a system such as America's where the financial
base for schools starts with local property taxes. But the state of
Pennsylvania compounds the problem by deliberately under-funding the schools
in the state that are most in need of money.
As Rutgers University professor Bruce Baker [9] explains on his blog, "the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has among the least equitable state school
finance systems in the country [10]," giving less state and local revenue to
the state's highest needs schools like Chester Upland.
A national report released by the U.S. Department of Education earlier this
year spotlighted the Quaker State as being among the worst of the 23 states
across the country that distribute more education money to richer school
districts and less money to those with the least means.
As The Post's Emma Brown [11] wrote when the report was released,
"Pennsylvania's state and local per-pupil spending in its poorest school
districts is 33 percent lower than per-pupil spending in the state's most
affluent school districts, the highest differential in the country."
Charters Sap the District
Charter schools add to the financial burden placed on resource-starved
schools like those in Chester Upland.
According to a local news outlet [12], teachers in Chester Upland "say the
district's ongoing financial problems are because of the state's funding
formula, specifically what the school district is required to pay to charter
schools. The school district receives about $16,000 for children with
learning disabilities from the state, but it is required to give the charter
schools $40,000 for each student listed with a learning disability."
"It's absolutely an unsustainable expense," Keever explains. The Chester
Upland district now pays about $64 million, over half of its budget, to the
charter schools - more money than what the school district gets from the
state.
Professor Baker, a school finance expert, says this method of financing
special education in charter schools "is poorly conceived, creates perverse
incentives for charter school operators, and inappropriately drains
disproportionate resources from sending districts."
Further, as Keever explains, "When students and funding are drawn away from
a traditional public school, the traditional public school can't reduce
their overhead because they have fixed costs. They have to operate the buses
and feed the students and pay the light and water bill. Charter schools
taking away a few students from different grade levels doesn't produce any
savings. You still have to staff the same number of classrooms."
A Special Education Scam
To be fair, charter schools, which have been expanding over the years, now
educate about half of the students in the district. But there are good
reasons to believe the charter schools have turned these payments for
special education services into a profit center.
"The charter schools are submitting bills for students with special learning
that are $10,000-17,000 more than what neighboring school districts are
paying.," Keever points out.
Indeed, Valerie Strauss [13], on her blog at The Washington Post, points to
a report from Chester Upland's state-appointed receiver, Francis Barnes, who
documents how the charter schools seem to mine the local district of
low-cost special education students while leaving the traditional schools
with students who have the most severe disabilities. He points to data
showing the district's charter schools tends to serve high proportions of
low-cost special needs students - those with speech and hearing
disabilities, for instance - while serving low proportions of high-cost
special needs students, such as those with autism or emotional problems.
"Payments to the charters are absolutely more than what it costs to educate
these children," Keever contends. "Many of the children designated special
needs in the charters are actually receiving low-cost services that the
charters are billing at $40,000."
Charter Fraud Is Rampant in Pennsylvania
It's not at all hard to believe there might be something fishy about a
charter school operation in Pennsylvania. Last year, a report [14], "Fraud
and Financial Mismanagement in Pennsylvania's Charter Schools," found
charter school officials in the state have defrauded at least $30 million
intended for school children since 1997.
The report found an administrator who diverted $2.6 million in school funds
to a church property he also operated. Another charter school chief was
caught spending millions in school funds to bail out other nonprofits
associated with the school. A pair of charter school operators stole more
than $900,000 from the school by using fraudulent invoices, and a cyber
school entrepreneur diverted $8 million of school funds for houses, a
Florida condominium, and an airplane.
Because Pennsylvania spends over a billion dollars a year on charter
schools, the $30 million documented in this study is likely the minimum
possible amount.
Another report revealed how Pennsylvania charters across the state had gamed
the system for special education funding. The report found in 2013, public
schools paid out $350 million for charters to educate special education
students but the charter schools spent only $150 million on special
education services, resulting in a $200 million profit [15] for the charter
industry.
None of this evidence of financial fraud has been uncovered by state
agencies overseeing the charter schools. The evidence has been brought to
light by whistleblowers, media coverage, and watchdog groups - not by state
auditors who have a history of not effectively detecting or preventing
fraud. And charter schools, which self-report their enrollments to the
district and the department of education, can operate for years without fear
of an audit.
Charter Operators Get Mansions While Teachers Can't Get Paid
What needs to change, at the very least, is the funding formula for how
charter schools are paid for special education services.
The Pennsylvania State Education Association has presented recommendations
[16] for changing the state's charter school law, that include fixing the
special education inequities, enforcing some financial transparency on
charters, and capping charter school undesignated fund balances.
To his credit, Governor Wolf has taken steps [17] to correct the funding
formulas for special education in a way that would help cash strapped
districts like Chester Upland. The charter school industry, unfortunately,
has fought him at every step, and Wolf's latest proposal was rejected by a
Pennsylvania district court [18].
In Chester Upland specifically, "The charter schools have accumulated
massive fund balances," due to gaming the state's charter funding system,
Keever contends. He points to one charter in particular, Chester Community
Charter School.
Chester Community Charter, the largest charter in the district, is managed
by a company owned by Vahan Gureghian. Gureghian, an attorney and prodigious
donor to Republican politicians [19], recently put on the market his Palm
Beach, Florida mansion listed at $84.5 million. The "French inspired" house
[20] features 35,000 feet of living space, a bowling alley, and a moat.
"It's difficult to pin down how much the Chester Community Charter School
and others have profited," Keever admits. "The charters have refused to
honor right to know requests under the state's open records laws, so there's
little to no way to document how much the management company that runs that
charter is actually taking out."
While the full extent of charter school profiting remains a question,
nevertheless, Gureghian and his expansive Palm Beach estate strike quite a
sharp contrast to Dariah Jackson and the rest of the Chester Upland
educators willing to work for no pay.
Speaking from her small classroom, in a beleaguered school, in a
long-struggling community, Jackson remains defiant. "I want everyone to know
we care about our students. The paycheck is not what's foremost in our
minds.
"Now we just need our elected officials to act."
For the students' sake, let's hope they do.
Jeff Bryant is an associate fellow at Campaign for America's Future and the
editor of the Education Opportunity Network website. Prior to joining
OurFuture.org he was one of the principal writers for Open Left.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [21]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[22]
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/education/how-gop-and-education-privatizers-are-usin
g-charters-bleed-pennsylvania-schools-dry
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/jeff-bryant
[2] http://www.salon.com
[3]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/in-a-bankrupt-pa-school-distri
ct-teachers-plan-to-work-for-free/2015/08/28/0332898e-4dba-11e5-84df-923b3ef
1a64b_story.html
[4]
http://www.ydr.com/politics/ci_28664643/wolf-lawmakers-resume-talks-gop-offe
r-school-aid
[5] http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2015/05/pa-cyber-whine-party.html
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_Upland_School_District
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per_capita_income
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_family_income
[9]
http://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2012/06/05/the-commonwealth-triple-scr
ew-special-education-funding-charter-school-payments-in-pennsylvania/
[10] http://www.schoolfundingfairness.org/
[11]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/03/12/in-23-states-richer-s
chool-districts-get-more-local-funding-than-poorer-districts/
[12]
http://6abc.com/education/chester-upland-teachers-agree-to-work-without-pay/
960004/
[13]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/08/31/is-this-any-w
ay-to-run-a-school-district/
[14]
http://populardemocracy.org/sites/default/files/charter-schools-PA-Fraud.pdf
[15] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRw5oO02KpA
[16]
http://www.psea.org/uploadedFiles/LegislationAndPolitics/Solutions_That_Work
/STW-UpdatePACharterSchoolLaw.pdf
[17]
http://articles.philly.com/2015-08-24/news/65773715_1_public-charter-schools
-robert-fayfich-pennsylvania-coalition
[18]
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/20150826_Judge_rejects_Wolf_challeng
e_to_charter_funding.html#FaBkHDktlZRAO83z.99
[19] http://powerplayers-pa.herokuapp.com/donors/vahan-gureghian-i/
[20]
http://www.palmbeachdailynews.com/news/news/local/north-end-mansion-listed-a
t-845m/nkhyf/
[21] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on How the GOP and
Education Privatizers Are Using Charters to Bleed Pennsylvania Schools Dry
[22] http://www.alternet.org/
[23] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
