Our schools are laying off teachers and staff--just to fund the legislature's broken state employee pension system.

The PA State Employees Pension System (PSERS) is increasing beyond our ability to pay for it. It is draining our schools and communities of wealth and education. It's not the employees' fault.

Because the Legislature increased the pension formula over 10 years ago, the costs have skyrocketed for school districts and cities dramatically, leading to massive cuts in teachers, police, and other civil servants, and left us with huge property tax increases.

Our state's wealth is in our common resources, which all of us own. Part of our "commonwealth" today is our natural gas.

We should allow natural gas companies to safely extract the natural gas, and use the revenue from the sale of the gas to fund Education and fix the broken pension system.