Madison Kwiecinski 

News Editor 

Mvk5945@psu.edu 

In November of 2014, several school districts filed a suit in Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth court, claiming that the current way school funding is distributed is inadequate and violated that state constitution. This case, which began in court on November 12, 2021 and is currently ongoing and expected to span several weeks has the potential to completely alter how PA schools are funded. 

The Public Interest Law Center, coupled with the Education Law Center and O’Melveny & Myers LLP, filed the suit on behalf of six PA school districts, seven parents and the Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools, PARSS, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Pennsylvania State Conference against legislative leaders, state education officials and the Governor in 2014. The Commonwealth Court heard oral arguments, and then dismissed the case claiming they do not interfere with school funding issues, forcing the case to be appealed to the PA Supreme Court, which ruled the Commonwealth Court must hear the case, in September of 2017. 

According to The Public Interests Law Center’s website, “Pennsylvania’s constitution states that the General Assembly must ‘provide a thorough and efficient system of public education to serve the needs of the Commonwealth.’ Instead, the state has adopted an irrational and inequitable system of funding public education that does not provide the resources students need to meet state standards and discriminates against students based on where they live and the wealth of their local communities.”

Those who are suing state officials are asking the court to do the following: 

1. Declare that the current system in place for the funding of our schools does not comply with the state constitution.
2. Order the state legislature, PA’s governor, and the Department of Education to create and maintain a new “thorough and efficient” school funding system that will allow for all students to receive the quality education they deserve, in a way that does not discriminate against low-wealth school districts.

Those suing are not requesting a specific dollar amount be invested into the education system, however, they have also made it clear that redistributing the current funds within the state will not be enough and that redistributing funds will not equate to enough money in districts to meet adequate state benchmarks. 

Panther Valley, a small rural school district among one of the six involved in the suit, described some of the conditions their district faces over several days of testimony. Large class sizes, high turnover rate on teachers, and large class sizes were among some of the most common shared complaints. Additionally, the district has one toilet for a total of 75 kindergarteners. The Superintendent of the district described some of the difficult decisions he has to deal with, including whether he fills positions after teachers retire and whether the art and sports departments need to be cut in order to maintain money for education. 

Members of the Republican legislature have pushed back against the claim that these schools are underfunded by using their large range of courses offered, such as AP, advanced placement, courses for students. Republicans in the legislature also argued that Panther Valley specifically has a new full-day kindergarten class and a state-funded pre-K program and noted that the district managed to repave a parking lot.

Derek Black, a constitutional law professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law was called upon during the case to explain what the framers had in mind when including the phrase “thorough and efficient system of public education.” 

Black stated, “the delegates wanted to ensure that Pennsylvania’s citizens were engaged, intelligent voters — the key to a functional government — and believed the best way to accomplish this was through a high quality school system for all students.” He explained that their intent was to extinguish the old system and move toward one that was able to serve all children in the state. Black also stated, “They thought that was really important, that if you kept kids in different schools or in different classifications of schools, when it came down to it inevitably the poor kids would get an inferior education.”

The framers also aimed to avoid excessive taxes on poor and rural areas in order to fund schools, and stated that the commonwealth should spend $1 million on education, a number that would clearly need to be adjusted as time passed. 

The first week’s testimony on the case closed with Professor Mathew Kelly, a professor at Penn State’s College of Education and an expert in the field of education finance. Kelly aimed to explain how the state’s heavy reliance on taxes to fund education had led to the huge disparities in education between wealthy and poor communities. 

Kelly also conducted an extensive analysis in order to calculate  PA’s adequacy shortfalls: the gap in each district between the funding that is currently available to them and the funding goal that a state benchmark sets as the adequate funding needed to meet expected state standards. However, the state stopped providing calculations for this benchmark in 2010-11, and makes no current attempt to set a state standard. According to his analysis, the 20 percent of school districts educating the highest percentage of students of color have a collective economic shortfall $1.4 billion less than the shortfall faced by the 20 percent of districts educating the fewest students of color.

This case is ongoing and will likely take several more weeks. Regardless of who wins the case, it is likely it will be appealed to the PA Supreme Court after a verdict is reached.