(The Center Square) – Republican legislative leaders said this week they’ll accept the recent court ruling that deemed Pennsylvania’s education funding system unconstitutional.
Now policymakers must grapple with what a new system looks like, and how it will meet the standards the state has fallen short of for decades.
Former Gov. Tom Wolf, the legislature, and the state’s education officials were all taken to task in the landmark case, which was brought by a coalition of both urban and rural school districts, parents, and advocacy groups. The ruling found they had failed to “provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of public education” as stated within the constitution.
The ruling in William Penn School District et al. v. Pennsylvania Department of Education et al, came in February, nearly a decade after the lawsuit was filed. Leaders had until Friday to make an appeal.
Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward, R-Greensburg, and Majority Leader Joe Pittman, R-Indiana, issued a statement Monday explaining the party’s choice not to appeal the court’s ruling.
“In order to evolve our approach to school funding and ensure fairness for our students, further modifications and an examination of ways to streamline services must be explored,” the leaders said. “Engaging in a holistic approach which finds an appropriate balance between addressing the needs of students and respecting the ability of taxpayers to pay the costs is vital.”
A huge area of concern for Pennsylvania public schools is the source of their funding. The majority of a district’s support comes from property taxes paid by residents. This creates a major gap between wealthy suburban districts flush with single-family homes and high property taxes and the vast majority of the state’s pupils, who are located in lower-income urban and rural areas.
The mechanism means poorer school districts often lack the tax base necessary to fill the gaps, even in the face of growing enrollment. The same problem plagues rural districts, where the shrinking population can’t afford to sustain annual property tax increases.
But the current funding formulas don’t address these disparities in any meaningful way. The majority of the $13.3 billion spent on public education in 2021-22 was distributed based on enrollment data from the early 1990s. A smaller fraction, about 20%, funneled through an updated calculation that considers a district’s socio-economic constraints.
The court’s ruling affirms what critics have long claimed – this funding system falls short of its constitutional requirement to provide adequate support.
Gov. Josh Shapiro, while serving as Attorney General, was in support of the case and wrote in an amicus brief, that “the General Assembly is failing its constitutional obligation.”
