At the final hour, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf and the Republican legislative leadership agreed to an infuction of $100 million into the state's poorest public schools in exchange for the governor backing off a regulatory expansion of eligibility for overtime pay.
Wolf, a Democrat, had sought more than $1 billion in new, higher funding for public schools, but met Republican resistance.
He settled for $300 million extra for school district operations and instruction, including the unique idea of setting aside $100 million of that strictly for school districts historically disadvantaged by how Pennsylvania distributes aid to schools.
In exchange, Wolf agreed to a provision repealing a regulation he won approval for in 2020 to expand the ranks of lower-wage salaried workers who must receive time-and-a-half pay for any time they work over 40 hours in a week, York County state Rep. Stan Saylor, the House Appropriations Committee chairman, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press. The new overtime provision would have boosted the overtime threshold by $5,000 from the federal threshold to about $40,600 a year, and then again in October 2022 to $45,500 a year.
