It’s time to fix Pa.’s lousy school funding system
“We need you to come together and fix Pennsylvania’s broken education funding structure.” That is the opening line in an open letter to Gov. Tom Wolf, House Speaker Cutler, and Senate President Corman (a letter that has already gained over 300 signatures) demanding they address the Commonwealth’s unacceptable, inequitable, and insufficient support for our public schools. (If you want to add your name, you can find a link to the letter on pafairfunding.org under “Sign Letter to Gov Wolf”)
Pennsylvania has a larger per-pupil spending gap between its wealthiest and poorest school districts than any other state. Pennsylvania currently ranks 47th (out of all 50 states) in terms of its share of public school funding. Nationally, state dollars account for about half of all public school funding; here in Pennsylvania, they account for just one-third of that funding. This contribution varies by district.
Making matters worse, state dollars aren’t allocated to districts based on need but instead based on historic funding levels.
“Need” would consider, for example, whether a district’s enrollment or its students’ needs have grown. We have a system for quantifying need: Pennsylvania’s Fair Funding Formula takes all of this into account when determining how to allocate state dollars. This formula was passed nearly unanimously by both the House (where it got only 3 “no” votes) and the Senate (just 1 “no” vote) in 2015. And yet this Fair Funding Formula is only used to distribute “new” money, and so allocates just 11% of total PA state Basic Education Funding.
So today, growing districts receive $1.14 billion less, collectively, than the fair funding formula suggests they should. (It’s important to note that over half of all Pennsylvania public school students are in underfunded districts, as are 80% of the Commonwealth’s students of color).
Montgomery County K-12 Public Schools cumulatively would have received $315 million more from the state over the six years since the Fair Funding Formula was introduced, if the formula were used for all PA Basic Education Funding!
Who pays that price of this inequity? Our students do, with cuts to needed programs; and our taxpayers do, as they are the ones paying to maintain essential academic and extracurricular programming AND keep up with the state mandates you’ve been hearing about.
It’s time to act — to put more state dollars towards our public schools and to make sure that state funding is tied to districts’ and students’ needs. The Governor’s Proposed 2021 Budget does this, a number of bills introduced in the Senate and in the house do this. Let’s get this done.