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Budget sends $500 million more to Pennsylvania’s poorest schools • PA Spotlight
HARRISBURG — After weeks of tense and secretive negotiations over Pennsylvania’s budget, the legislature approved a $47.6 billion spending deal that falls short of the investment in public schools initially proposed by Democrats and is far more than Republicans wanted to spend.
The plan features more than $1 billion in new spending for K-12 education divided among several budget lines. This includes a $225 million increase in basic education funding, $100 million more for special education and $100 million for mental health and physical safety.
It also creates a $493.8 million “adequacy supplement” and a $32 million “tax equity supplement” that respond to a landmark court ruling that found the state unconstitutionally underfunds poor districts.
Public school advocates, including those who helped bring the funding case, had hoped for a much larger investment, given the commonwealth’s roughly $15 billion surplus. State House Democrats have proposed spending more than $860 million to adequately fund the state’s poorest districts in the coming fiscal year and have rolled the investment into several years of increases in future budgets.
In his February budget address, Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro asked for $1 billion in new spending that goes directly to elementary and secondary schools, particularly those in poor districts, plus $525 million for additional school-based programs.
While Republicans have acknowledged that the Commonwealth Court ruling would mean some additional spending on education, they have repeatedly rejected Democrats’ calls for higher spending numbers, citing concerns about future deficits and support for alternatives to public education.
Lawyers for the Education Law Center and the Public Interest Law Center said Wednesday that if the funding included in this year’s budget did not include a multi-year plan and timeline to comply with the Commonwealth Court ruling, they would consider returning to the court.
The judge in that case concluded that lawmakers were “failing to fulfill their constitutional duties,” but did not prescribe a remedy, noting that the “options for reform are virtually limitless.” Plaintiffs have the option of going back to the judge, arguing that the terms of the ruling are not being followed, and asking the judge to review whether the defendants — in this case, the state lawmakers — are in compliance.
The organizations did not say Thursday whether they would pursue further legal action. But in a joint statement, the two groups said Pennsylvania’s constitution “requires more.”
“The governor and the General Assembly have recognized the broad scope of the problem,” they said. “Now, they must identify the timeline by which Pennsylvania students will receive the funding the Constitution requires, and do so with the urgency that children deserve and need.”
The deal approved Thursday will reduce the amount of tuition that virtual schools receive from public schools for students with disabilities starting in January 2025, saving districts about $34.5 million in the next fiscal year.
Charter schools, including cyber charters, are funded through direct payments from public districts that are calculated based on the district’s per-pupil spending.
If a student has a disability, his or her tuition is built on this base rate for the district, plus a standard percentage of its spending for all disability services — regardless of the type of disability the student has. Public school advocates often argue that this unnecessarily inflates costs for many students with disabilities and overburdens public districts.
These advocates, and many Democrats, supported a plan that would have overhauled the decades-old charter school funding system. Most significantly, that plan would have established a flat statewide tuition rate for public school reimbursements to cyber charters. They also advocated for additional oversight for cyber charters, including capping the massive reserves some schools managed to accumulate.
Republican leaders said they agreed that the charter reimbursement system was out of dateparticularly for cyber schools that have lower overhead costs. However, they favored a different approach — restoring a budget line item cut under a previous GOP administration that added additional funding for public schools in recognition of the cost burdens associated with charter school tuition.
Public school advocates have opposed this approach, arguing that it would not adequately address the burdens that the charter school funding system imposes on public schools and would essentially subsidize cyber charter schools.
Finally, lawmakers added a $100 million line item to the budget that will direct money to public school districts that have resident students enrolled in cyber charter schools. The plan does not include any changes to the state tuition rate for charters or cyber charters, other than adjustments to disability payments.
Includes a list of new supervision requirements for charter and cyber charter schools. This includes classifying their administrators as public employees, which will require them to file financial interest disclosures with the state. The rules also bar administrators from awarding contracts if they have a conflict of interest and require the firing of administrators convicted of crimes, including felonies, fraud or theft.
The budget does not create a taxpayer-funded private school voucher program favored by legislative Republicans. However, it does raise the limits on the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) and Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) to US$540 million and US$90 million, respectively.
The programs offer tax incentives to individuals or businesses that provide money to nonprofit educational organizations that fund scholarships for students to attend private schools.
These tax credits have been growing over the years and in recent years, financing he has jumped even more. The larger of the two, the EITC, was first created in 2001 as a $30 million program. Appropriations have increased steadily since then.
However, the agency that oversees the programs fails to track many of them. the main program success metricssuch as whether the scholarship allows students to switch from public to private schools, their academic performance, how much of the tuition the scholarship covers, or what the family income is.
The smaller of the two tax credits, OSTC, is limited to students in the lowest-performing school districts in the commonwealth. But the EITC is open to a much wider range of students — their families you just have to do it $108,444 or less, plus $19,088 for each dependent family member.
Spotlight PA’s Katie Meyer contributed reporting.
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