$9 billion more should be spent on education, and other takeaways from a commission tasked to redo Pa.’s funding

Pennsylvania should inject more than $9 billion in additional money into public education over the next seven years, a legislative commission recommended Thursday — a finding that follows last year’s Commonwealth Court decision ruling the state’s school funding unconstitutional.

Whether the recommendation — spanning funding for school operations, aging facilities repairs, and tax relief to high-taxing districts — will actually be implemented, however, was unclear. Republicans on the Basic Education Funding Commission voted against it, instead endorsing a different report that didn’t put a price tag on school underfunding.

Advocates who sued the state over inadequate funding called the recommendations conservative, but said they also could be transformative.

“We’d like the number to be higher,” and the time frame to be shorter, said Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg, senior attorney with the Public Interest Law Center, a Philadelphia nonprofit legal group. “We also recognize that it’s a serious, serious proposal that if enacted year after year would make real change.”

Here’s what the report says, what led to its release, and what happens next:

The commission’s report follows last year’s landmark Commonwealth Court ruling that found Pennsylvania has been depriving students of needed resources — particularly those in poorer school districts, which don’t have the ability to raise as much in property taxes as their wealthier peers, in a system that relies heavily on those local taxes to pay for education.

As a result, the state has been violating students’ right to an education, the court found.

Although Pennsylvania has a school funding formula that directs additional money to needier districts, it’s been applied only to a portion of state education funding, so that districts with declining enrollment aren’t penalized. As a result, the formula’s impact has been limited.

The formula also doesn’t contain targets for what school districts should be spending. Instead, it’s used to distribute whatever the state allocates.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the funding case — including six school districts, among them Delaware County’s William Penn — have called for a new system that sets those “adequacy targets,” accompanied by $6.2 billion in additional spending to meet them. The figure is based on a Penn State professor’s analysis of which school districts are meeting interim state goals, and how much they spend per student.

The report agreed that targets were needed, though it arrived at a lesser figure for underfunding — $5.4 billion. Advocates said that while education policy professor Matthew Kelly’s analysis had excluded high- and low-spending districts deemed to be outliers, lawmakers’ analysis excluded only high-spending districts — such as Lower Merion and Radnor — bringing the average down.

The report said that although $5.4 billion is “a large figure” — nearly 18% of district spending in 2021-22 — it was a “comprehensive solution to a large problem.”

Of the $5.4 billion, the state should cover $5.1 billion, with $291 million the responsibility of “low-tax effort school districts,” the report said.

Philadelphia, by the report’s calculation, has an adequacy gap of $1.4 billion; by the commission’s math, it would get $242 million in additional funding in the upcoming budget cycle.

In the rural Panther Valley School District — one of the plaintiffs in the funding case — Superintendent David McAndrew said the additional $3.5 million his district would get next year under the commission’s proposal could be the start of “transformational” change, allowing for more reading specialists, counselors, teachers, and social workers.

“The one thing I’m a little concerned about is the time frame of seven years,” McAndrew said. “Our kids have a lot of needs.”

The report also recommended that the state reimburse high-taxing districts, spending an additional $955 million on “tax equity supplements.” That money would go to districts with tax efforts greater than the 66th percentile statewide, according to the report.

It gave the example of two districts both deemed to be spending inadequately — East Stroudsburg Area and Cumberland Valley — and said that if East Stroudsburg lowered its tax rate to equal the 66th percentile, it would have an adequacy gap of $56.6 million. But if Cumberland Valley raised its tax rate to the 66th percentile, it wouldn’t have any adequacy gap.

“To provide additional state aid to Cumberland Valley SD and not East Stroudsburg Area SD is illogical,” the report said.

That’s not the only additional spending the commission advised. On top of the $6 billion recommended to address the adequacy gap, the report said Pennsylvania should distribute $200 million more each year through an updated funding formula, with revisions to provide more stability for school districts. (Among those revisions: allowing school districts to qualify for a larger share of aid if they had a poverty rate of 30% in one of the past three years, rather than just the most recent year.)

And Pennsylvania should devote $300 million a year to school facilities, the report said — over seven years, amounting to “a substantial investment of more than $2 billion towards the school infrastructure crisis.”

Sen. Vincent Hughes (D., Philadelphia) said he was pleased the report dealt not just with basic education funding but “toxic and broken” school buildings.

The report is a victory because of “a sizeable projected increase in adequacy funding to deal with what we call in our office the William Penn districts” — those, such as the Delaware County school system that was one of the plaintiffs in the Commonwealth Court decision, that lack adequate funding.

Still, he said, the recommendations represent “the floor and not the ceiling.”

Advocates said the recommended spending in the report only amounted to a “down payment” for school facilities. The Philadelphia school district alone, for instance, has estimated facilities needs at more than $7 billion.

The report didn’t address funding pre-kindergarten, and it also doesn’t put a price tag on reforming the state’s approach to charter schools. But it listed a few ways lawmakers could improve charter funding, including reinstating a state reimbursement to districts for students they send to charters.

The Democratic report cited testimony from the Pennsylvania School Boards Association that more than 93% of locally elected school boards have passed resolutions calling for charter reform.

The report also excludes some of the Republican priorities they put in their own report, such as school vouchers. Republicans say these options are still necessary in the meantime of any changes to the state’s school funding system.

“Obviously, the intent is to build up the public school system to the best of our ability,” said Sen. Kristin Phillips-Hill (R., York), who co-chaired the commission. “Until such time, students that are in low-performing schools that are low-income need to have the option to move to a school that meets their needs and is high performing.”

None of these recommendations will automatically go into effect. Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, will propose many of these recommendations as part of his budget address next month. Then the proposals will get introduced as formal legislation that will be negotiated as part of a final budget deal, due by June 30.

But the work of the Basic Education Funding Commission is officially over. This is the “end of the beginning,” said Rep. Mike Sturla (D., Lancaster).

The report passed 8-7, with most Democrats and members of Shapiro’s administration in support. (One Democrat, Sen. Lindsey Williams, of Allegheny County, voted no, saying the report didn’t go far enough in making changes.)

No Republicans on the commission voted for the report — saying their role was to recommend changes to the formula, rather than lock in spending since the state’s economic future over the next seven years was unpredictable. Democrats rejected this.

“‘Some’ is not a number, and ‘soon’ is not a time,” said Rep. Peter Schweyer (D., Lehigh), who also chairs the House Education committee.