Notes on the Appropriations Committee Hearings in House & Senate 2025

There were several trends in the questioning regarding all of PDE’s spending to pay attention to:

• There is a focus on wanting better outcomes with funding, and being able to prove better outcomes are coming with more money.
• There was a lot of discussion surrounding supporting workers in education, particularly in early childhood education, qualified child care workers, and student teachers.
• There is a lot of interest in workforce development and Career & Technical Education.
• There were concerns raised about the impact of the changes/proposed changes at the Federal Department of Education and other federal agencies.

Advocacy Opportunities

• What you can do:
  • Tell your representatives and senators how you are better able to serve communities with the money you receive and how much an increase in state aid would help your community. What could you do with it? What benefits (outcomes) would your community see? Sell what your materials/services do for people, not just “We offer large print and e-books.”
  • Respond to any of the data collection requests from the Office of Commonwealth Libraries or other state and municipal offices. These usually come to the Directors, but there are some that ask for broader community input.
  • Gather data about your library and its community to help navigate the conversations with local, state, and national leaders. Calculate the library’s ROI – for every $1 of library revenue, the library generates $x value in the community. Gather feel-good stories that show user outcomes. Help the legislature make good decisions by providing good data.
• What you should not do:
  • Ask for less accountability. The standards may not work for your library or community at this time, but the conversation should be on what indicates quality library service. Frame the conversation to share how your library’s services align with what their constituents need.
  • Have no stories or data to explain how amazing your library is!

Library-Specific Question Transcripts and Time Stamps

• Rep. Bellman: (HOUSE Session 1, 1:25:40) It’s about school libraries. State funding support for libraries has not kept pace with inflation. What are you hearing from our library partners about their needs and funding challenges?
  • Dr. Rowe: The libraries are absolutely an essential part of any communities’ ecosystem, and they do more in public libraries than one would expect. Of course they help with literacy, and they help with introduction to literacy as well by having families come and do readings there, but they also help bridge the gap with technology. Where individuals who don’t necessarily have the skills needed to enter the workforce related to technology can come for different workshops. A lot of workforce development needs like resume help and job search resources and career counseling also happen in libraries. Community resilience and emergency services are often centered in libraries as an information hub. So, it can’t be understated how important libraries are to the functioning of any community, and naturally we’d like to see our libraries well-funded and thriving. Part of that is the governor’s planned budget proposal of $70 million to libraries.
• Rep. Webster: (HOUSE Session 1, 2:01:18) Libraries have had this, I think, I’ve said this over the last three or four years. In my time on the appropriations committee, the impact personally to  librarians and libraries has been dramatic. In my experience, and I know we talk a little bit about libraries in our schools, but let’s talk about our public libraries. What can we do? How can we support that increase? Again, connecting the dots, we’ve talked about how that helps our youngest learners and then over a lifetime of learning how impactful that in public libraries.
  • Dr. Rowe: Your question really is the answer. It’s about the lifetime of learning. It’s about Commonwealth public libraries being part of the ecosystem of a functioning community. Their importance can’t be understated and part of what we need to do is to fund them commensurately. When the work that they do is of vital importance to our workforce development, to our social services supports, to technology related issues with makerspaces and 3D printers and learning things like that so that people can be not only creative but also productive with their new skills in the workforce. This is something to be prized and commensurate pay should follow.
• Rep. Madsen: (HOUSE Session 1, 2:19:05) I understand that the library regulations are currently being reviewed by the legal department within PDE. When can we expect to see these results?
  • Dr. Rowe: Those should be out very soon; I can tell you in advance that the regulations being looked at are being changed from ones created in the 1960s, some in the 1980s, and haven’t received any changes since then. A lot of those are relaxing  some of the current regulations so that public libraries can do more of the great work they’re already doing without additional constraint. They deal with accessing additional funds based on how they interact with having a director who is full-time.
• Rep. Kutz: (HOUSE Session 2, 34:02) I want to mention the library line item as well, which has been kind of lower than what we had at historic highs. I want to know that these programs are great equalizers for the workforce. We have a lot of folks in rural parts of the Commonwealth that can’t access WiFi, that need to go rent out a jetpack and be able to use it to just get a job interview. Given that, I wonder if there’s any discussion at the Department about potentially moving forward with helping restore funding for libraries for some of those vital services.
  • Dr. Rowe: You will get no arguments from me if you want to engage in conversations about increasing the line item related to public libraries. I think they are an integral and essential part of our Commonwealth’s ecosystem and integral to the smooth functioning of our communities.
  • Rep. Kutz: I will add, as an attorney, I have utilized the law library before at Cumberland County’s, my local, law library as well.
• Sen. Vogel (SENATE, Session 1, 36:39) Obviously our public libraries are a huge part of our lives, and we’ve learned that more than ever back during the pandemic. And I know from Beaver County, that Beaver County has a lot of great libraries, but the funding’s been stagnant for a number of years. I’m just wondering: has the department and the governor’s office talked about more funding for the library system? I mean, obviously, it does a huge service to our communities and it’s more and more dependent on, as time goes on, and with the Governor putting $581,000 into the State Library and nothing into the local libraries. That just makes me wonder where somebody’s priorities are, I guess.
  • Dr. Rowe: Throughout the budget process, there have been conversations about where money should be placed. The face that public libraries serve an integral role in our communities isn’t overlooked by the department or the administration. The role that they play in workforce development, in providing social services, maker spaces, and actually being a hub related to community information, particularly in times of crisis, is well known; that of course, is on top of promoting literacy, which is of central concern naturally to the department. Sometimes it’s the first introduction to literacy, spanning that digital divide. So the public library subsidy this year is $70 million to help achieve those particular needs. The department is also looking at regulations and relaxing some of the regulations that exist so that additional flexibility can be there for our libraries.
  • Sen. Vogel: I know a lot of our libraries are getting up there in age and they need a lot of maintenance to them; a lot of roofs and things like that need to be replaced, and it’s just a real burden on them to have to constantly try to fundraise to get that kind of money when they have all the other obligations to meet as well.