By Laura Benshoff

– Teachers union president Michele Paulick said she received some unwelcome news at the Chester Upland School District teacher convocation this week.

“Our superintendent, Gregory Shannon, read a letter from our receiver, Francis Barnes, that informed the teachers that there are no funds,” said Paulick, who described feeling “shock, frustration and anger” at the news.

However, in a Thursday evening vote, the 200-member union decided unanimously to work without pay for as long as individual members are able, Paulick said. The Chester Upland School District educates about 3,500 students, with nearly the same number attending area charter schools.

“We arrived at the decision to continue working because we have to put our children first,” she said. “It’s not their fault we’re in this situation.”

Two factors put Chester Upland in an especially difficult position. The district, which has been designated fiscally distressed for more than 20 years, is carrying a $24 million budget deficit from the last school year. Thanks to Pennsylvania’s ongoing budget gridlock, no money is flowing into the district from state coffers.

With no fund balance and no money coming in, officials said they won’t be able to make payroll for the first week of school, which starts Wednesday.

The parent union, the Pennsylvania State Education Association, is helping to raise funds to supplement teachers’ loss of income. This is the second time in recent memory that Chester Upland teachers voted to work without pay. In 2012, the district ran out of operating funds in January and asked for an emergency infusion of cash from then Gov. Tom Corbett.

This year, the timing is worse, said Paulick. “We haven’t had any paychecks coming in over the summer, so it was very difficult to budget” for the coming weeks.

News that the district is too broke to operate comes on the heels of another blow to the district’s finances. Earlier this week, Delaware County Court of Common Pleas Judge Chad Kenney rejected several portions of a recovery plan that would have eliminated the district’s existing fund deficit.

The plan, backed by Gov. Tom Wolf, proposed eliminating the $24 million deficit, largely by cutting back special-education tuition payments to charter schools. Those payments have ballooned in recent years to $40,000 per student, regardless of how severe — and therefore expensive — the student’s disability may be.

Wolf spokesman Jeff Sheridan said the receiver and state advisers to the district “are reviewing our options for further corrective action” based on Kenney’s comments.

When the budget is finally passed, “all districts would have the money come to them retroactively,” said Sheridan. Other districts have cut charter payments or taken out loans to cover their costs while the state budget negotiations sputter along.

Pennsylvania is two months into the fiscal year with no budget as Wolf and GOP legislative leaders wrangle for a spending plan that bends to their priorities.

Paulick said the impasse is “a travesty.”

“We are out here serving our community and serving our students, and we just need the support from our elected officials,” she said.

Source – http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local/item/85684-chester-upland-cant-pay-its-teachers-but-theyre-working-anyway

By The PA. AFL-CIO

– Thank you Governor Wolf for bringing Pennsylvania’s voter registration into the the 21st century. Online voter registration became a reality for Pennsylvania voters this week. The online registration application, hosted by the Department of State, is now available for use by eligible citizens at register.votesPA.com.

We fully support this initiative as one of the many improvements to make it easier and efficient for people to register and to vote in every election. This will help improve citizen participation which will strengthen our democracy. We encourage everyone to vote no matter whether you are blue red or purple.” President Bloomingdale said.

“What a contrast to just a few years ago when we were fighting to protect the right to vote from an “ALEC sponsored” Voter ID law that disenfranchises hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania voters. Now we have a Governor who believes as we do that our democracy is stronger when people vote and hold their elected officials accountable,” Secretary-Treasurer Snyder said.

Source – http://www.paaflcio.org/?p=6356

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

– Atlantic City’s main casino workers union said Tuesday it has given billionaire Carl Icahn “one last chance” to avoid a strike at the Taj Mahal casino by reinstating employee health and pension benefits.

Local 54 of the Unite-HERE union held a public strike preparation event Tuesday, gathering materials it would need for a strike. It also trained workers to be “picket captains” in the event it makes good on its threat to strike.

Icahn is in the process of acquiring the casino from bankruptcy court, but the transfer has not yet become official. The union wants the restoration of health insurance and pension benefits that Trump Entertainment Resorts canceled last October.

Icahn has called the benefits unaffordable, adding he will close the casino if an appeals court reinstates them.

Source – http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local/item/85537-casino-union-last-chance-for-icahn-to-avoid-strike-at-taj-mahal

By The ASSOCIATED PRESS

– Gov. Tom Wolf is blasting Republican lawmakers over a plan to force piece-by-piece override votes of his budget bill veto, saying GOP leaders can’t negotiate in good faith while staging what he calls an unconstitutional and unproductive move.

Wolf’s comments in a letter to Pennsylvania lawmakers Monday afternoon came a day before the planned veto override votes and the resumption of talks on an 8-week-old budget stalemate that’s shut off funding to a range of safety-net services.

Pennsylvania is nearly two months into its new fiscal year without a legal spending plan in place. On June 30, Wolf vetoed the GOP’s entire $30.2 billion budget bill within hours of its passage with only Republican support.

Republicans accuse of Wolf of holding the safety-net service providers hostage to get what he wants.

Source – http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local/item/85497-wolf-strikes-back-at-gop-lawmakers-on-budget-plan

By The PA. AFL-CIO

– The Pennsylvania AFL-CIO reiterates its call to the Republican leadership in the Legislature to stop playing politics and get back to work now in passing a responsible budget that solves Pennsylvania problems. Every day that they continue to stall adds to the costs of providing much needed human services. Social service agencies all over the state are on the brink of either closing their doors or borrowing to provide services to their communities. Costs for child care for working parents, early child learning programs, help for our seniors, people with disabilities and addictions. And our schools especially in our urban and rural areas of Pennsylvania that really more on state funding to teach our kids.

The GOP leadership’s latest offer, amounts to repackaged proposal to cut pension benefits of public employees in exchange for agreement on how much to spend on public education but not how to pay for it. Cutting pensions won’t provide additional funds. And along with the massive cuts to pensions House Majority Leader Dave Reed publicly suggested privatizing wine and spirits stores as a possible way to pay for restoring their cuts in our public schools.

They say that if this is not accepted by Governor Wolf and Democrats, it’s back to square one in negotiations. They’ve never gotten off of square one! Same attacks, just a different day. They still are not addressing the budget deficit in a responsible way or providing the funding to restore the cuts in public education and social services. It’s time to get off of their square and begin negotiating in good faith instead of more of the same political theatre and budget gimmicks. Get to work and start addressing the real issues for Pennsylvania as outlined and addressed by Governor Wolf’s budget.

Source – http://www.paaflcio.org/?p=6347