Fight over who pays for public schools heads to Senate floor

The Pennsylvania Senate is juggling a long-simmering fight over who pays for public schools.

A potential Monday vote is arriving just as Gov. Tom Wolf and top lawmakers try to hold together the skeleton of a five-months-late budget deal.

Some privately worry it could destabilize those efforts.

It’s also no small matter. It would require a multibillion-dollar state takeover of public school funding from school boards.

It’s not yet clear whether it will pass.

To end school property taxes, the personal income tax rate would rise from 3.07 percent to 4.34 percent while more types of food, clothing and shoes would be exposed to a 7 percent tax on sales, up from 6 percent.

But it’s also not clear whether it is adequate to fully replace school property taxes.