Response to the 2024–2025 State Budget: Education Funding
Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on July 11, 2024. July 11, 2024 Governor Shapiro and the members of the General Assembly have had about 18 months to respond to the Commonwealth Court ruling that Pennsylvania’s system of funding K–12 education is unconstitutional. And Pennsylvania politicians have had decades to recognize that far too many low-income and Black and brown schoolchildren have not received an adequate education, which has limited their opportunities and denied the Commonwealth the full flowering of their talents and abilities. The K–12 budget that we expect to be enacted soon recognizes the problem. But it does not put the state on a path to solving it. It recognizes the problem in two ways. First, for the first time in our history, the school code embraces a formula that quantifies the problem. The school code says that school districts need $4.5 billion in new funding to adequately… Continue reading
