Education advocates joined Democrats in the state legislature yesterday to urge passage of a bill that would create the Nellie Bly Scholarship Program, a key Wolf Administration initiative to provide aid to students at the State System of Higher Education universities, but the plan has horse racing advocates in the state crying, “Whoa Nellie!”.
Senate Bill 377 would create a $200 million tuition aid program named after the Armstrong County native and groundbreaking journalist, who in 1879 spent a single term at what is now IUP but had to drop out because she couldn’t afford it. It is the Wolf Administration’s second effort to institute the program after failing to get legislative approval once before.
Among those urging passage of the bill yesterday were the prime sponsor, Senator Wayne Fontana, Senator Tim Kearney, and representatives of the State Department of Education, the PA School Counselor Association, Education Voters of PA, and APSCUF President Dr. Jamie Martin of IUP, along with Kutztown University student Melissa Stough.
Martin called the proposal a “real solution” to the student-debt crisis in the state, which she blamed on “policy choices (that) have led to devastating consequences for students attending public universities in the Commonwealth.”
The $200 million for the Nellie Bly Scholarship would be taken from the Pennsylvania Race Horse Development Trust Fund, which the Wolf Administration contends is being mismanaged and used to subsidize out-of-state racehorse owners. The fund is scheduled to receive $239 million in revenues from the gaming industry in the next fiscal year. Horse racing advocates say Wolf’s proposal would kill the industry in Pennsylvania.
Comments