In rendering a decision on payments from the Chester-Upland School District (Delaware County) to charter schools, the Judge in the case noted in his opinion “The commonwealth needs to find a proper level of state funding to educate children from poor families in a poor district that cannot fund its own children with local property taxes”
Chester-Upland, in 2013-14 according to data on school finances from the PA Department of Education, is a poor district. On a per-pupil basis (the District had 6,995 students) total revenue was $16,744. Local revenue generated $2,824 (17%) of this total; state revenue generated $12,268 (73%). The remainder came from Federal and other sources.
Statewide, when ranking public school districts 1-500, Chester-Upland was near the bottom (492nd) on local revenue, and near the top (6th) on state revenue.
Isn’t that the way state funding is supposed to work? When examining the fifteen districts in Delaware County, Chester-Upland gets twice as much money from the state per-pupil than the next closest district (William Penn, $6,615) and four to five times as much as districts like Radnor, Springfield, and Haverford. Those districts are generating $15,000 or more per-pupil locally and far in excess of what Chester-Upland can raise. So why is the state at fault in the Judge’s eyes if the District is getting far in excess of other districts in the County?
