At its final meeting before adjourning, and almost a year after the Commonwealth Court decision declaring the state’s education funding model unconstitutional, the Basic Education Funding Commission considered two reports to submit as recommendations to the General Assembly.
The first report failed to garner support, the second passed by one vote. That is what will go forward as the legislative and executive branches gear up for the fiscal year (FY) 2024-25 budget message next month.
What are some of the highlights of the report that passed the commission? It would keep the existing hybrid for the basic education funding subsidy in place. In FY 2023-24 it totals $7.9 billion and is comprised of the $5.9 billion base and $2.0 billion through the student-weighted formula. The base is mostly comprised of “hold harmless” money that does not diminish even if enrollment drops; the student-weighted formula is comprised of various factors with differing weights and is how all new appropriations since FY 2015-16 are sent to school districts.
Noting that if all of the base went through the student-weighted formula “over $1 billion would be dramatically redistributed across school districts,” it looks like “hold harmless” cannot be touched. The formula would stay mostly the same with the exception of the number of years used to average the poverty component in the student-based factors.
The report recommends that base be moved forward from 2014-15 to 2023-24, meaning that a district would receive its existing base plus what it received from the formula this year, and that a minimum of $200 million go through the formula each fiscal year.
The report urges adoption of adequacy targets for districts to arrive at a sufficient funding level per student. The report puts this amount at $13,704, which 387 of the 500 districts spend below. The statewide impact of the “adequacy gap” is $5.4 billion. As this differs among districts not only on spending but on state and local revenue shares, the report recommends that districts with a high tax effort receive a supplement back from the state.
The report’s data shows that of Allegheny County’s 43 school districts, 22 would be part of the statewide “adequacy gap.”
Additional factors the report wants to be considered are school facilities, charter school funding and the education workforce, among others.
All in all it adds up to an expensive proposition and one that could end up back in court depending on how deliberations go through June.
