FREE-plus Initiative

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FREE-plus

Freeing schools from the burden of unfunded mandates

Unfunded and underfunded mandates continue to hinder school district budgets across Pennsylvania, especially in these difficult economic times. The association has been leading the fight for meaningful mandate relief, and has introduced this  campaign on mandate relief that builds on the association’s Focusing Resources on Educational Expenses (FREE) initiative from the previous legislative session by focusing on broad mandate relief in addition to targeting several specific issues.

The new FREE-plus initiative would allow school districts to be more responsive to students’ individual needs and to address cost-savings measures in the communities in which they reside. The FREE-plus package includes:

    • “FREE” -- The re-introduction of a package of bills addressing specific mandates.
    • “Plus” -- The introduction of new legislation establishing a new and expanded waiver process that would allow school boards to suspend a wider scope of mandates.

    The FREE-plus Campaign

    The  “Free” Segment: Targeting Specific Mandates

    This segment will include various bills that target permanent legislative relief in several specific areas.  The package is in various stages of drafting and introduction, and we will provide details on this page soon, including bill descriptions, numbers and sponsors. The bills address numerous mandates in the categories areas of:

    • Personnel Management (including HB 855 regarding economic furlough of employees)
    • Buildings, Construction, Operations and Transportation
    • School Funding

    The “Plus” Segment: Districts Choose Broad Mandate Relief

    Under this segment, legislation is being proposed to allow school districts, area vocational technical schools, career and technical centers and intermediate units to adopt at a public meeting a resolution to suspend any mandate or combination of mandates, along with rationale that justifies how the change would improve instructional programs or allow the entity to operate in a more effective, efficient or economical manner. (Mandates related to certain legal requirements and health and safety issues could not be suspended.)  The board could specify an expiration date for the suspension or allow the suspension to be indefinite, and could re-impose the mandate through a subsequent resolution. 

    Following adoption, the school board would provide a copy of the resolution to the Pennsylvania Department of Education for review. The department would not have to formally approve the resolution but could disapprove it if it failed to meet requirements. Any resolution submitted to PDE that is not disapproved would be deemed approved.  The department would maintain on its website a register of mandates suspended by school districts.

PSBA resources to help your board send the message to legislators:

Other PSBA resources on economic furloughs (requires member login!)