Gov. Shapiro says Republicans won’t appeal Pa.’s landmark school-funding ruling

Republican lawmakers have indicated they won’t appeal the landmark decision finding Pennsylvania’s school funding unconstitutional, Gov. Josh Shapiro said Wednesday — meaning it will fall now to the governor and legislature to produce a solution to the broken funding system.

Speaking in the library of George Washington Carver High School of Engineering and Science in North Philadelphia, the Democratic governor said leaders have signaled to him that they will not challenge Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer’s February ruling, which found low-wealth school districts had been deprived of adequate funding and shortchanged compared with wealthier peers.

“Every single leader in Harrisburg, Republican and Democrat, has accepted this responsibility. They’ve said that to my face,” Shapiro said. “And by virtue of them not appealing this decision, they’ve made it clear that they now bear the responsibility to have equitable and adequate funding for all of God’s children in every one of our 500 school districts.”

The 786-page decision was handed down Feb. 7, but Republicans, who defended the state during the monthslong trial, still have a window to appeal.

Senate President Kim Ward and Rep. Bryan Cutler, the House Republican leader, filed a motion Feb. 17 arguing there were errors in the ruling. Spokespeople for both Republicans said Wednesday they would continue to make that case; a hearing is scheduled for May 22.

“However it is our preference for the legislature to begin working together toward a 21st-century education system that helps every child,” said Erica Clayton Wright, a spokesperson for Ward.

While acknowledging that Republicans could still appeal, Shapiro said Wednesday that “by all indications there are no plans” to do so.

As a result, the next steps likely will be defined not by a court order but by negotiations between Shapiro and a politically divided legislature.

The school districts — including Delaware County’s William Penn — parents, and organizations that won the funding case will also be part of the process.

“It is past time to create a system that provides every child in every corner of the commonwealth with an effective and contemporary education,” said Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg, a lawyer with the Public Interest Law Center who represented the petitioners in the case, filed in 2014. “The work is urgent, and should start now.”

Shapiro, who took office in January, unveiled a budget plan last week that included more money for schools but fell short of what Democrats and public education advocates had called for. The proposed $567 million increase in the main form of state aid to schools, for instance, largely tracks inflation.

It also didn’t make changes to the way Pennsylvania distributes school funding: While the state has a formula that gives added money to districts for students in poverty and other special needs, it doesn’t apply to most of what the state sends to school districts.

That policy, coupled with a heavy reliance on property taxes to fund public education, has led to wide gaps in spending between wealthy and poor districts.

To help narrow those gaps, former Gov. Tom Wolf and lawmakers the last two years set aside added money for the 100 poorest districts. Shapiro’s budget proposal maintains funding for the so-called Level Up program from the prior year but doesn’t increase it.

On Wednesday, the governor said his proposal this year — with $1 billion more for education, including $100 million for fixing school buildings — represented a “down payment,” while next year’s budget would be “coming back with a plan on how to both increase that funding as well as make sure it’s driven out in an equitable fashion.”

“This is not a one-budget process,” Shapiro said. “This will take multiple steps, multiple years, multiple budgets, to meet the responsibility we all have” in producing a constitutional funding system.

Shapiro, who as attorney general filed an amicus brief in support of the petitioners suing the state, said the funding decision was “a great moment of opportunity for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to both believe in the next generation and invest in them.”