Intermediate Units
I studied philosophy of math in college. One idea that always stuck with me is that there are many different kinds of infinity. The classic infinity happens when you keep counting forward on the number line. But there's also an infinity between any two numbers, like between 0 and 1. Because you can always keep dividing, numbers are infinitely deep. I bring this up because I get a sense of infinite depth from school policy, specifically the number and kinds of institution involved in education. Between any two institutions there's another institution doing something else with its own history and regulations and budget. Between any two policies is another policy, formal or informal, that was relevant at some point and could be relevant again.
The infinite depth of the education apparatus is important because if we want to think about what education policy, particularly finance, could look like in a socialist American society we have to understand every layer of the apparatus. Not only do we have to know it better than anyone else, we should be able to think creatively about how to use these layers and their policy histories to create potentially new and more just arrangements in line with our ideology.
In Pennsylvania, there's one such institution I want to examine a little more carefully for this reason: Intermediate Units. I'd heard about them from my education leadership students in the past but didn't appreciate how unique they are until one of them mentioned that she works at one and did a presentation on it. Looking into them more, I found a whole world of the Pennsylvania education apparatus I didn't know before.
Between state and local
Remember that when it comes to education policy, there's typically three levels of the apparatus to consider: federal, state, and local. The relationships between these levels of government can feel intractable and frustratingly set in stone. Yet subtleties always exist. Case in point: the Pennsylvania Intermediate Unit (IU) exists between the state and local levels, between the commonwealth government and school districts. According to the Pennsylvania Association of Intermediate Units, IUs are
entrepreneurial, highly skilled, technology-rich, and agile providers of cost-effective, instructional, and operational services to school districts, charter schools, and over 2,400 non-public and private schools. Additionally, intermediate units are direct providers of quality instruction to over 50,000 Pennsylvania students.
Over the years, intermediate units have responded to a wide array of needs as they developed in schools and communities throughout the state. Today, intermediate units continue to fulfill their mission of service by addressing traditional and emerging needs, serving as essential links for learning in Pennsylvania, and as a liaison between local schools and the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
I chuckled at the first line of this definition, which is stuffed with all kinds of neoliberal gobbledygook. The next thing I thought was: this is a very capacious description! The IUs provide "services" to schools of every kind and also are direct providers of education. They have "responded to a wide array of needs." What has this entailed exactly? My student mentioned that the IU provides professional development, resources, assessment materials, as well as actual school facilities for students. These IUs do a lot. IU 17 in north-central PA got a $20,000 grant to do environmental education programs with its four counties. IU 24 in Chester County sponsors academic competitions in partnership with elected officials.
Reflecting on fifty years of work in April, the Berks County IU was said to have provided transportation, technology, support with special education to schools and stuffed squirrels for new teachers. They break it down into four categories: advancing professionals, safe and healthy schools, serving students and supporting schools. Okay, that can kind of mean anything!
And they're everywhere. There are 29 of them all over the state. Notice IU 26, the one for Philadelphia. It's co-terminous with the city, meaning that the city's school district is also an intermediate unit. (More on that later.)
Evolved by accident
The IUs were created in 1970s after policymakers decided in the 1950s that the state's education apparatus was messed up. They agreed at the time that "the present organization of administration for school management in the State of Pennsylvania has evolved by accident rather than by planned pattern, and...this procedure has resulted in a state of confusion and a lack of clarification of the responsibilities of local administrators, county superintendents, and the State Department of Education."
There had been a layer of education officials between the state board of education and the school districts themselves. These "county superintendents" oversaw the districts and helped them do their work. Apparently this wasn't working very well, so through the machinations of state power new regions were demarcated based on population and property value, the county superintendents transformed into units of educational oversight intermediating between the state and the district. A report put together by researcher and administrator Paul Christman concluded in 1967 that
increased demands are being made of the education system, resulting in the need for highly specialized services which cannot be provided well State Board of Education, An Intermediate Unit for Pennsylvania 9 (Harrisburg, 1967), 1. Ibid, 9-12. 10 -13- either by the Department or a school district. The growth of such activities as national curriculum development projects, research and development centers at universities, regional learning laboratories, and many new State-served activities, creates the need for a better system of coordinating these activities and bringing them to a school district. These developments suggest the need for some kind of intermediate unit to provide services to school districts.
The concept of the IU was codified into law in 1971 as Act 102, an amendment to the Public School Code of 1949 (still the law by which Pennsylvania schools are governed). The general legal provision is stated here:
Each school district of the Commonwealth shall be assigned to an intermediate unit, and shall be entitled to the services of an intermediate unit in accordance with a program of services adopted by the intermediate unit board of directors. The arrangement of the school districts of the Commonwealth into intermediate units shall reflect consideration of (i) the number of public school children enrolled in kindergarten through grade twelve, (ii) ease of travel within each intermediate unit, and (iii) the opportunity to provide adequate basic services.
So the IU can do whatever the board of directors say it should within the bounds of the law, making the governance structure quite important. Here's how the law sets it out:
Intermediate Unit Board of Directors.--(a) The intermediate unit board of directors shall be composed of thirteen members except as otherwise provided for in this subsection, chosen for terms of three years from among members of the boards of school directors of school districts comprising the intermediate unit. An intermediate unit director may succeed himself without limitation as to the number of terms. Where there are fewer than thirteen school districts within an intermediate unit, there shall be one school director from each school district elected to the intermediate unit board of directors, but any such intermediate unit board of directors may elect one additional at-large member. When there are more than thirteen districts in an intermediate unit each district, as far as practicable, may have one member on the unit board, up to a maximum of twenty-two members.
So the IU leadership is like a district of districts, the leaders of which are elected from among participant districts' leadership. The votes themselves are actually proportionate to the size of the districts involved. Every district leader has at least one vote but some district leaders have more than one vote. It's very complicated.
The election of intermediate unit boards of directors shall be by proportionate ballot, and each school director of each school district within an intermediate unit shall be entitled to cast votes determined by dividing the weighted average daily membership of the school district by the total weighted average daily membership within the intermediate unit, multiplying the quotient so obtained by one thousand, dividing the product so obtained by the number of directors as provided for above, and rounding such dividend to the nearest whole number: Provided, however, That each school director shall have at least one vote. The Secretary of Education shall annually, not later than the first day of February, certify the weighted average daily membership for the previous school year for each school district and for each intermediate unit, and shall compute the number of votes to which each school director of each school district within an intermediate unit shall be entitled.
Think about the IU like a piece on chess board. It has certain powers and limitations. Generally, it's important to see that IUs can do things that school districts can't. They can get resources, provide/distribute resources, network between districts and with the state department of education, and also can draw funding from the state level that might not be available to a district by itself. I found out from my student that IUs aren't considered local educational agencies under federal law, so they strictly operate between the local and the state level, subject to to their rules. If the board of directors at an IU want to do something, the IU can do it, and this will impact all the districts assigned to that IU. Further, IUs can sell bonds. My student did her presentation on the bond that the Chester County IU sold to build its facilities on Boot Road.
I'm wondering what possibilities there might be for IUS in PA when it comes to school policy, specifically finance. Could a certain faction gain control of the IU and direct certain resources to all the districts in that IU's purview? Could the IUs come together and issue a bond to benefit each other somehow? Could an IU issue a bond for a set of school districts? Could IUs be a vessel to distribute program resources or entitlements which policymakers might not otherwise be able to do?
The case of Philadelphia's IU
Finally, as a coda, let's look at the Philadelphia IU, the IU concept gets even weirder. In Philly, the city government is co-terminous with the school district government, each of which lead the schools in different ways. There's a superintendent and school board (appointed by the mayor). But there's also an intermediate unit. So how does that work? The law says: "In the case of an intermediate unit comprised of a single school district, the board of education of the school district shall be the intermediate unit board of directors." So the Philadelphia School Board is also the board of the IU.
Looking at the SDP's budget, the IU gets its own dedicated fund, filed under the general operating fund. So at least for financial purposes the IU is part of the district's operating expenditures. Yet this IU fund is different than the general fund from which most expenditures are taken. And we can see how IUs are funded by the state, at least in the case of Philly, by looking at the breakdown of the district's revenues.
The total is about $175.5 million most recently, the vast majority coming from state's budget. This money breaks down into special education tuition, special education transportation, retirement, and social security. I'm particularly interested in the "miscellaneous" category there from the local revenues, which in 2019-20 had about $80k in it, though it went down to zero the last two cycles. I also wonder whether the district decides to run social security and retirement state revenues through the IU for a particular reason? If the district does those compensation programs through the IU, what other kinds of financial distributions could happen through this entity?
Another thing, the district appears to get an "intermediate unit advance" from the state for the previous year's expense. Over the last three years, the reimbursement hovered around $65-70 million. Does that mean that the district is footing half the IU bill each year? Does that impact the budget cycle at all? It's a solid chunk of change.
Intermediation
In all, the IU is a great example of the infinite depth of apparatuses. A final point about this: socialists tend to think of society as a struggle rather than a potentially harmonious balance between interests. Society is a formation of forces led by material interests rather than enlightened individuals in pursuit of justice. One of the consequences of thinking this way is to presume that things can and will change. No matter how firm or obdurate institutions are, the flux of history will prevail.
The infinite depth of institutions--the intermediate units--in the educational apparatus is a perfect example. The fact that there are IUs and that they can be used in various ways is yet another example of the contingency of everything and thus the possibility that things could be otherwise.