Gov. Tom Wolf has delivered a loud and clear message to rural school districts like Warren County — open your checkbook.

And that’s what the Warren County School District will have to do unless state legislators approve higher taxes for the state’s high wage earners. Of course, that’s something the state Legislature has been loathe to do for ages. Wolf’s school funding proposal could decrease Warren County’s state aid per pupil from $5,746 in 2019-20 to $3,411 in 2020-21 — unless the legislature approves Wolf’s new taxes.

This all stems from Wolf’s decision to expand use of the state’s fair funding formula, which was first approved back in 2015. The formula determines a district’s share of state education dollars based on factors like enrollment, students learning English or experiencing poverty, and median household income. In 2019-20, 11% of the state’s $6.2 billion education budget went through the formula, which critics say meant rural districts received too much money and districts in bigger cities were shortchanged. Wolf’s proposal is to distribute all of the state’s proposed $6.4 billion in education funding through the formula and then spend another $1.15 billion raised in new taxes on high wage earners to keep rural school districts funding the same.

Give Wolf credit for doing something his counterparts in New York state have not done for the last four decades in realizing there are limits to how much the state can spend on school aid. New York spends roughly $24,000 a year per pupil, and that money does not lead to students in New York faring better educationally than their counterparts in other states. There have to be limits, and it’s rare that a Democrat like Wolf would place such a hard limit on something like education funding.

Where we disagree with Wolf is how the formula is designed and the timing of making such a drastic change in education funding. The fair funding formula is weighted heavily toward cities. While that is understandable because city schools’ enrollments are growing and need additional state support, it is unfair to abrogate the state’s responsibility for rural school districts in such an abrupt fashion. Rural school districts are losing population, but their communities are also losing tax base, which means those districts don’t have the tax base to raise large amounts of local dollars to pay for education. What Wolf has done is set a hard limit and then pushed all his chips in the direction of the big cities.

In our view, making such a drastic change in the span of a few months is unrealistic and damaging to rural schools. The Warren County School District could see itself losing $10,509,381 in school aid this year. Having that decision forced on district officials in such a manner means either a hefty tax increase or make deep cuts to programs in the span of a few months. The tax increase is unfair to homeowners and businesses already struggling through the COVID-19 pandemic. Cuts to programs are unfair to students.

It’s obvious that Wolf’s solution is going to be unworkable in the state Legislature, so we challenge state legislators to come up with something better. Pennsylvania should not be a state that simply throws money at its schools and expects the additional money to solve all of its schools’ problems. A fair funding formula should be just that — fair to all schools. The formula should be one that takes into account the state’s fair share for rural schools and urban schools and then adequately pays for that share.

Rural schools and city schools have different needs. The state’s education funding must be cognizant of that fact.

And, Warren County school board members, we’d suggest making sure the local school budget is as lean as possible. The legislature may overrule Wolf this year, but this proposal isn’t going away.