Last fall we wrote about a case pending before the PA Supreme Court on school funding. The plaintiffs in the case want to see a ruling that would declare that the Legislative and Executive branches have failed to adequately fund K-12 education. The case was dismissed by Commonwealth Court and is being heard on appeal.
The Erie School District this week announced that it would consider joining the case as a plaintiff. As we noted in an October 2015 Brief on the state budget impasse the District went to the state during that time to ask for a loan. The District is currently in financial watch status under Act 141 and wants to join the suit to possibly “…strengthen the plaintiffs’ case…we are a district that is inadequately funded” stated the District’s superintendent.
For some reason the article states “if the Supreme Court reverses Commonwealth Court, the case then goes back to Commonwealth Court for a hearing on the core claim–whether the state’s system of funding is unconstitutional because poorer school districts general receive less state money than wealthier school districts”.
But that is not the case: either in the filing or in the data. The case cited the examples of Lower Merion and Shenandoah Valley on what they raised locally ($23k to $4k) but the state gives three times as much to the latter ($3k to $9k). And a quick search of state funding per pupil from the Department of Education’s Financial Data Elements sorted by aid ratios shows that those with the highest ratios (indicating a district with low property and income wealth) received more money from the state than those with lower ratios (a point we made in a 2014 Brief). Those with low ratios of 0.15 were getting amounts in the $3,000-$3,600 range from the state while those with ratios in the 0.7 and 0.8 range were getting amounts of $8,000 and above, with districts as high as $13k to $17k. The issue is not that the state does not give more money to poorer districts, just that with the ability to tax real estate wealth districts can raise a lot locally and spend more money.
Parties to the case also pointed to the fact that the new funding formula applies only to new money beyond 2014-15 and does not do much to rectify the situation they see as unfair, but as we noted in 2015 the Basic Funding Commission’s recommendation to do so was based on the fact that “Eliminating the “hold harmless” clause would have resulted in 320 school districts receiving approximately $1 billion less in basic education funding.”
