Pennsylvania’s governor made his fiscal year (FY) 2024-25 budget presentation on Tuesday. With almost a year passing since the state’s Commonwealth Court ruled the method of funding K-12 public education unconstitutional, many observers were eager to see how this would be addressed in the budget.
Following the ruling, the Basic Education Funding Commission (commission) took testimony on school funding, and adjourned with two final reports presented.
Under the budget, the state would spend $8.97 billion on the basic education funding subsidy to school districts. This represents a 13.5 percent increase over the $7.9 billion spent this fiscal year.
If adopted, the subsidy would have three components:
- The base amount ($7.9 billion) would be the total basic education funding subsidy for FY 2023-24. In other words, it would be a new base amount with the FY 2023-24 base ($5.9 billion), plus the money that has flowed through the student-weighted formula from FY 2015-16 through FY 2023-24 ($2.0 billion).
- A distribution through the student-weighted formula ($200 million) and each school district would receive a proportional share of the money by way of the formula.
- A distribution through the adequacy investment ($871 million). The commission recommended establishing an “adequacy target” and directing money to the districts who spend less on a per-student basis. Districts with a high local tax effort would receive money back from the state under the proposal.
Will this satisfy the court’s ruling? Will it prevent wealthy districts from spending more per student so that they are still able have better resources than neighboring districts that might not have the same property tax base? These are questions that will certainly be considered as the budget deliberations commence.
How would this affect the 43 school districts in Allegheny County?
- The base amount would total $593 million, about 7.5 percent of the statewide base amount.
- The student-weighted distribution would total $13.5 million, or 6.8 percent of the statewide amount.
- The adequacy investment would total $43.4 million. But due to its formulas for spending targets and local tax effort, nine school districts would receive nothing from this portion of the subsidy in FY 2024-25. This group includes Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS).
PPS would receive $177.7 million as its base and $2.3 million through the student-weighted formula.
With little emphasis on accountability, performance and adding complexity to the subsidy, it will be interesting to see how the proposal is received by the General Assembly. Consider that in FY 2014-15—before the student-weighted formula, Level-Up funding and other modifications to the subsidy, the state spent $5.5 billion. Next year, if approved, the subsidy will have grown 63 percent.
