William Penn funding suit goes to trial in 2020

HARRISBURG >> The public school funding lawsuit against the state will go trial in the Commonwealth Court in the summer of 2020.

Commonwealth Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer released an order Thursday afternoon tentatively scheduling trial for two summers from now is the first big news for the case since the court dismissed a motion of mootness brought by Pennsylvania Senate Pro Tempore Joseph Scarnati, R-25, and Pennsylvania Speaker of the House Mike Turzai, R-28, back in August.

This will be the first trial on the issue of how the state funds public education in its 500 school districts since the court originally dismissed the case in April 2015. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court reversed that decision in September 2017.

The order released a timeline of events that the parties in William Penn School District et al. v. PA Department of Education et al. must follow before going to trial: discovery completed by Oct. 4, 2019; primary expert reports served by Nov. 4, 2019 with rebuttal expert reports exactly one month after that; motions for summary judgment and briefs in support due Feb. 4, 2020 with responses due March 4, 2020; reply briefs field by March 18, 2020.

A pretrial conference will be scheduled following deposition of any motions for summary judgment.

“We are pleased that the court has set a timeline for bringing this case to trial so that legislative leaders cannot continue to postpone and delay,” said Education Law Center legal director Maura McInerney in a prepared statement release Thursday. “Every day that legislative leaders fail to act is a day that students are deprived of basic resources, and our children who need the most continue to get the least.”

At the center of the case are 14 petitioners including families, associationS and school districts – led by William Penn – who claim that the state’s funding system violates the Pennsylvania Constitutional duty because of underfunding and other disparities that affect lower income districts.

Scarnati and Turzai unsuccessfully argued over the summer that the lawsuit was moot because of a new funding mechanism (the fair funding formula signed into law as Act 35 of 2016) has addressed the original funding scheme that was in place when the lawsuit was first filed in 2014.

Their mootness brief said petitioning school districts have received more money since the use of the fair funding formula established in Act 35, but the petitioners said funding has not kept up with inflation and costs that outpace the increase in funding streams.

Since 2015, approximately $450 million of the $6 billion basic education has been appropriated by the funding formula through 2017-18.

“We’re very confident that we’ll be able to prove to the court that thousands of children in our state are deprived of the education they deserve, and that they have a constitutional right to receive,” Public Interest Law Center attorney Michael Churchill said in a prepared statement. “The school districts who have joined our lawsuit know this is true, and students in underfunded schools know this is true. The legislature has the power to fix this, whether they take action before 2020 or wait for us to win at trial.”

William Penn Superintendent Jane Ann Harbert could not be reached for comment Thursday.