A judge found William Penn students didn’t have enough resources. Now they could lose arts and sports, too.

To balance its budget for next year, the William Penn School District has cut back on academic interventionists for struggling students, eliminated mental health services, and slashed pay for teachers who lead after-school clubs.

It’s also planning to raise taxes on residents in the Delaware County district — who already pay one of the highest rates in Pennsylvania — by 5.9%.

Now the district’s superintendent is warning that it might have to also cut arts and athletic programs — depending on the state budget deal that lawmakers reach for the upcoming fiscal year.

“It’s not that we want to,” but there may be no other choice, said Superintendent Eric Becoats. “We are probably at our bare bones.”

The prospect of more cuts has “devastated” district teachers, said Andrea Fink, president of the William Penn Education Association.

“There’s no reason for poorer school districts to not have art and music,” Fink said. “Our kids deserve the same things our neighboring school districts” have.

William Penn has long struggled with funding. The district was the first named plaintiff in a lawsuit filed in 2014 against Pennsylvania, alleging the state had deprived poorer school districts — which can only raise so much revenue from their weak tax bases, no matter how high they set their rates — of the resources needed to adequately educate students.

In 2023, William Penn won, with a landmark Commonwealth Court ruling finding the state had violated its constitutional promise to provide a “thorough and efficient” system of education and had discriminated against children in poorer communities. Yet relief has been slow to follow.

In response to the ruling, lawmakers adopted a new school funding formula last year that concluded a majority of districts across Pennsylvania were underfunded by a total of $4.5 billion; William Penn was owed $29 million. This year’s budget included an extra $500 million for those districts, including $3 million for William Penn.

William Penn is banking on the second installment of that money in next year’s state budget, though lawmakers may not reach agreement by June 30 — the deadline for the district to finalize its spending plan.

The district is also counting on saving another $2 million from a less-certain source: proposed state cuts to the payments school districts make to cyber charter schools. For years, public education advocates have pushed for a flat tuition rate for cyber charters, which are paid by districts for each enrolled student at the same rates paid to brick-and-mortar charters. Those rates are based on what districts spend per pupil and vary by district, from about $7,000 to $25,000 per regular-education student.

School districts say cyber charters are draining their budgets, as enrollment in the online schools has grown. The charters, meanwhile, have been amassing hundreds of millions of dollars in assets. Pennsylvania’s auditor general earlier this year said that increases in the charters’ fund balances “could be considered excessive,” and called the current funding structure flawed.

Gov. Josh Shapiro proposed an $8,000 flat rate in his budget plan, and House Democrats earlier this month passed a bill to enact that change. But cyber charters say that rate would mean deep cuts for their students, and Republicans who control the Senate have yet to take up the legislation.

Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R., Indiana), said that “certain aspects” of the bill could be beneficial, but that any additional changes to cyber charter funding needed to take into account changes made last year that decreased tuition payments to cyber charters for special education students. Schools have seen “real savings” this year as a result of that change, Pittman said.

William Penn has some specific budget challenges. The district underbudgeted last year, including for special education services, resulting in having to borrow $13 million just to pay its bills.

As a result, the district — whose business administrator resigned this winter — “started from ground zero” in rebuilding its budget for the coming year, Becoats said. Central office positions have been outsourced, and 30 positions are being held vacant next school year.

The district and its lawyers say the broader problem is that the state isn’t fixing school underfunding fast enough. At the current rate, it will take Pennsylvania nine years to phase in the extra $4.5 billion.

While William Penn got an additional $3 million from the state last year, “this is a district still underfunded by $26 million,” said Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg, senior attorney with the Public Interest Law Center, which represented the district in the funding lawsuit.

“Those are not numbers in a spreadsheet — those are art teachers and specialists and counselors, the very things that the court said kids in that district are entitled to," Urevick-Ackelsberg said.

Asked about the contention the state was remedying underfunding too slowly, Pittman said the vast majority of new state education dollars proposed by Shapiro are slated for the 348 inadequately funded districts — with just 3% of the increase going to the other 152 districts.

“This proposed breakdown raises valid questions of fairness,” said Pittman, who declined to comment on William Penn’s budget situation.

Fink began teaching in William Penn in 2012, as a kindergarten teacher assigned a class of 32 students.

“I was sure that was a mistake,” said Fink. It wasn’t.

“‘Hang in there. We’re going to make this right,’” Fink recalls the superintendent at the time telling her.

Thirteen years later, Fink’s former kindergarten class has graduated, after “their whole educational career has been underfunded.” And she’s worried about what may happen next.

Fink, who is now an academic interventionist, had a caseload last year of 54 students who were deemed most at risk of not passing state English language arts tests. With the district’s cuts for this coming year, she’ll be in charge of students needing extra help with math, too.

Other teachers are considering leaving — with art and music teachers “super worried that they’re not going to have a job next year,” Fink said.

In the past, Fink said she’s given fellow teachers the same advice she once received: Hang in there. Now, “my words are, ‘You have to do what’s best for you,’” she said.

The district’s school board budget committee meets Thursday, ahead of a full board vote Monday on the budget. Assuming the state budget isn’t done by then, the district could have to make cuts after passing its budget, Becoats said.

If arts, music, athletics, and transportation end up being cut, Becoats said, “it will be a sad day for the William Penn School District, and for the state of Pennsylvania.”

Becoats, who took over William Penn in 2020, said the school funding lawsuit was necessary. But it hasn’t provided the district with any guarantees; each year, money is still contingent on lawmakers’ deliberations.

Assuming the state sticks with the plan to increase funding by $4.5 billion, “it will take us twenty years” from filing the lawsuit, to getting what the district is owed, Becoats said. “That’s just crazy to me.”