Study: Pa. shorted poor school districts with federal relief aid
Area school districts with the most students of color, and the most living in poverty were shortchanged by Harrisburg when federal COVID-19 relief funds were distributed.
That was the conclusion reached in a new analysis by the Keystone Research Center, an arm of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center.
And as Congress debates the provisions of another stimulus package to support the economy during the coronavirus pandemic, education advocates are urging that when Harrisburg distributes any further federal funding, that it “not to make this mistake again.”
That’s was the message Stephen Herzenberg, executive director of the Keystone Research
“When you consider that this country is currently wresting with its history of racial injustice, the tonedeafness to distribute the funds this way is stunning.”
Center, offered up during a press conference about the analysis.
“The simplest way to say this is that the state allocated these funds backwards,” Herzenberg said. “And when you consider that this country is currently wrestling with its history of racial injustice, the tone-deafness to distribute the funds this way is stunning.”
Doing so treats students in districts like Pottstown as “second-class citizens,” said Pottstown Schools Superintendent Stephen Rodriguez who spoke at the press conference announcing the findings.
Pottstown and Norristown were the only two districts in all of Montgomery County to receive less than their fair share, the analysis showed — a combined shortfall of $438,357, of which more than $300,000 is a loss for Pottstown schools.
That loss is calculated by applying the state’s own “fair-funding formula.”
The formula was enacted in 2015 and is supposed to ensure that school funding in Pennsylvania gets distributed fairly according to a formula which is adjusted for things like high poverty and stressed property tax base.
But the “fair funding formula” only distributes a small portion of Pennsylvania’s
— Stephen Herzenberg, Keystone Research Center
total education funding according to those guidelines. As a result, every year poorer school districts with higher minority populations, like Pottstown, Norristown and Reading, get less than their “fair share.”
In Pottstown’s case, each year that means $13 million less from the state than would be provided under the fair funding formula.
When Congress passed the CARES Act several months ago, it provided $5 billion to Pennsylvania. Of that about $600 million was earmarked for education.
Herzenberg said the federal education money was distributed in two ways. About $400 million was distributed according to federal Title 1 guidelines, which meant more money went to poorer districts.
But the other $174 million, which does not include funding provided to charter schools and intermediate units, was distributed however Harrisburg chose.
“One would have expected these funds to be distributed using the state’s Basic Education Funding formula,” Herzenberg said.
As federal aid, not regular funding, “this was a clear opportunity for the state to use the formula to ensure aid gets to the place that needs it most,” Pottstown Schools Superintendent Stephen Rodriguez said.
“The pandemic has stripped away any pretense that school funding in Pennsylvania is operating on anything like a level playing field,” said Susan Spicka, executive director of Education Voters PA, “a non-profit, non-partisan organization, established in 2007 to promote for a pro-public education agenda in Pennsylvania.”
All 12 Chester County school districts received a greater share of the pandemic relief funds than they would have had the fair funding formula bee applied.
Instead, the legislature and the Wolf administration agreed on an alternative approach: a fixed amount per district plus distribution of the remaining funds based on districts’ numbers of students (average daily membership or ADM), not taking into account the variables (like poverty) that the fair funding formula recognizes.
Research indicates students from low-income households are often more expensive to educate.
“In the 1990s, we could say we didn’t realize state funding wasn’t supporting Black and brown, lowincome students,” Rodriguez said.
“But now that we know, there’s no excuse” for not using the formula to distribute federal aid. “I’m very disturbed by this. We must do better for our students,” he said.
Had the additional $300,000 been provided to Pottstown, it could have been used for additional Zoom licenses for teachers; technology and Internet access for low-income families and even to secure additional substitutes, which have become a rare commodity as more and more teachers call out, Rodriguez said.