Last week, Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer declared Pennsylvania’s method of funding public schools unconstitutional. It may take years before the state remedies what has, for decades, been appalling school finance inequity between the state’s wealthy and poorer school districts. Last week’s court decision should be a cause for celebration nonetheless. The court has finally demanded a response from members of the General Assembly, whose constitutional responsibility it is to protect the right to public education for all of Pennsylvania’s children.
In 2015, Emma Brown, then writing for the Washington Post, reported: “Pennsylvania schools are the nation’s most inequitable…. At Martin Luther King High, a hulking half-full school here (in Philadelphia), there aren’t enough textbooks to go around… At Lower Merion High, 20 miles away, in a suburb of stately stone homes, copy paper and textbooks are available but are rarely necessary. Each student has a school-provided laptop.”
In 2016, Kevin McCorry presented the stark educational reality in Erie: “How did Erie end up in this position? Like many conversations about school funding in Pennsylvania, the answer takes you back to Harrisburg—out of which there hasn’t been a student-weighted funding formula for most of the past twenty-five years. So even though Erie is one of the most impoverished districts in the state, and has one of the highest percentages of English language learners, the district currently receives less per-pupil funding from the state’s main pot of cash than about 200 other districts.”
In a reminder that last week’s decision is merely a first step toward addressing the state’s decades-long educational inequity, the Philadelphia Inquirer‘s editorial board traces the history of the case: “Republicans in Harrisburg have long ignored education as an investment. More than a decade ago, then-Gov. Tom Corbett slashed education funding statewide by $1 billion and crippled Philadelphia’s schools. Doug Mastriano, last year’s Republican nominee for governor, wanted to eliminate property taxes and give parents vouchers for $9,000, which would have effectively cut (public) education funding by a third. Voters ensured that disaster was averted.” “However, when real change will come remains unclear. After all, the lawsuit was first filed in 2014 and did not go to trial until November 2021. After three months of arguments, the ruling came a year later. The decision will likely be appealed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. That process could take another year or so. If the Supreme Court upholds the decision, it will be left to the General Assembly and Gov. Josh Shapiro to determine how to properly fund the schools, as the judge’s ruling did not prescribe a remedy.”
The Washington Post‘s Moriah Balingit explains last week’s school funding decision: “In a 786-page ruling, Commonwealth Court President Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer wrote that the state had not adequately funded schools in poor communities, failing its constitutional obligation to educate young people. The spending was so unequal from district to district that it also violated the state’s equal protection clause, she said. ‘Educators credibly testified to lacking the very resources state officials have identified as essential to student achievement, some of which are as basic as safe and temperate facilities in which children can learn,’ Jubelirer wrote. ‘Students who reside in school districts with low property values and incomes are deprived of the same opportunities and resources as students who reside in school districts with high property values and incomes.'”
The plaintiffs in this case made a strong case that Pennsylvania’s school funding formula inequitably denies state support for the majority of the state’s school districts. The Inquirer‘s Maddie Hanna and Kristen Graham report: “Matthew Kelly, an assistant professor at Penn State, testified that 428 of Pennsylvania’s 500 districts are underfunded by a total of $4.6 billion, a calculation he updated from a study ordered by lawmakers and completed in 2007.”
The Schott Foundation for Public Education released a statement on Judge Jubelirer’s decision last week: “As we wrote in 2021, the education funding system in Pennsylvania is unfair both in collection and distribution. It’s unfair in the collection because of its heavy reliance on local property taxes: Not only does it mean that wealthier—and usually whiter—districts can more easily afford to raise funds for schools, but lower-income districts are forced to raise property taxes much higher to even begin to approach the kind of funding students get elsewhere. It’s (also) unfair in disbursement because lower-income districts end up spending far less per pupil while state lawmakers refuse to properly close the spending gap with statewide funds.”
In her Washington Post report, Moriah Balingit emphasizes that Pennsylvania’s school funding formula shares a basic problem endemic across many states: “The state’s schools provide a striking example of how using property tax funding creates a system of haves and have-nots… Nationally, local property taxes account for nearly half of public school funding, creating inherent inequality between wealthy communities that are replete with high-value properties, and poor ones, where properties are worth less. State and federal funding is supposed to help level the playing field, but it is often insufficient to make up the difference. And even if the funding were equal, advocates argue, students in poor communities often require more resources for things like special education teachers and English language learning. It is why, for example, the federal government allocates extra (Title I) dollars to schools that educate high concentrations of students in poverty.”
In Pennsylvania, Balingit describes one school district which epitomizes the kind of educational deprivation advocates hope last week’s court decision will address: “Greater Johnstown School District, located east of Pittsburgh, is the poorest school district in the state by median household income. The judge’s ruling pointed out that it could not afford to hire any social workers and has only two reading specialists for 1,200 students. ‘A high school teacher teaches French and Spanish simultaneously in one class period.'”
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