Pa. Democrats propose $3 billion school funding surge as ‘down payment’ in wake of court ruling

Democratic lawmakers, joined by Philadelphia school officials and attorneys who recently won a historic lawsuit challenging Pennsylvania’s school funding as inadequate and discriminatory, called Thursday for a surge in spending to start fixing the broken system.

The budget proposal from State Sen. Vincent Hughes, a Democrat representing parts of Philadelphia and Montgomery Counties who has long pushed for school funding increases, would add $3.15 billion for public education — a “down payment,” he said, on the February Commonwealth Court ruling finding Pennsylvania’s funding system unconstitutional.

The system, which has produced some of the country’s widest gaps between rich and poor school districts, “harkens back to the days of Jim Crow, harkens back to the days of slavery — to those days when it was illegal and against the law to educate Black and brown children,” Hughes said at a news conference at Philadelphia School District headquarters.

Now, he said, “we have an opportunity to change that.”

The proposal was announced ahead of Gov. Josh Shapiro’s first budget address next week — setting expectations for how public education advocates hope the new Democratic governor will address the state’s funding troubles. Pennsylvania has a funding formula that targets money to needier districts, but it only applies to a portion of education spending; using it to redistribute all spending would mean cuts in many of the state’s 500 districts.

Hughes’ plan doesn’t change that structure but would send an additional $750 million through the formula. And it would give an additional $400 million to 100 of the state’s highest-need districts — continuing the so-called Level Up program that has accelerated investment in some of Pennsylvania’s poorest communities.

The plan would also devote $1 billion to remediate toxic school buildings.

Pennsylvania has the money, Hughes said: The state’s Independent Fiscal Office projects the state will end the 2022-23 fiscal year with a surplus of nearly $6.7 billion, while lawmakers have deposited a record-high total of $5 billion into the state’s “rainy day” fund in the state’s last two budgets. (Despite the positive financial outlook for this year’s budget, the IFO projects a fiscal cliff — where spending outpaces revenue — starting in 2023-24 and continues to grow through the 2027-28 fiscal year.)

“Will we have the historic will and political fortitude to meet this moment?” Hughes said.

Shapiro — who as attorney general filed an amicus brief in support of the school districts who sued the state over funding — has not revealed details of his school funding plans. He recently told The Inquirer that it was unlikely he would propose a different funding system in his budget address, and that it could be several years before he and lawmakers reach and implement a solution to the court ruling, which found Pennsylvania’s funding unconstitutional both for depriving students of needed resources and for creating wide gaps between wealthy and poor communities.

In her 786-page decision, Commonwealth Court Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer didn’t specify a fix, leaving the next steps to lawmakers and the governor.

Spokespeople for Republicans who control the state Senate, meanwhile, declined to comment on Hughes’ plan Thursday but pointed to previous comments about the court ruling, including calls for balancing a solution with the needs of taxpayers.

“It would be better for us to do this together, representing all of our constituents, rather than letting this be tied up in the courts for years,” Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward said at a news conference Wednesday.

Ward and Rep. Bryan Cutler, leader of the House Republican Caucus, recently filed a motion preserving the right to appeal the ruling. Oral arguments are scheduled for May 22, and an appeal could follow.

Hughes and others at Thursday’s news conference said the state needs to invest more money now. They described how children in the state’s poorer communities have been left with inadequate, even hazardous resources — lead and asbestos in school buildings, for instance.

“We are educationally malnourished in the city,” said Reginald Streater, president of the Philadelphia school board, describing a “separate, but indeed, unequal” funding system. If Philadelphia were adequately funded, he said, the district would receive more than $5,000 more per pupil — based on an analysis of what it would cost for students to meet state academic standards.

“How are we going to excel without a space to excel in?” said Fatoumata Sidibe, a student at Bodine High School, adding that if the state invests in schools, “I can guarantee that you’ll see progress.”

Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg, an attorney with the Public Interest Law Center who represented the school districts, parents, and organizations that sued the state eight years ago, said each year that passes means “tens of thousands of Pennsylvania children starting school without the education that they are morally entitled to, and now legally entitled to.”

“A child is in kindergarten once, and once only,” he said.

Staff writer Gillian McGoldrick contributed to this article.