By Claudia De Palma and Maura McInerney

Each year in Carbon County’s Panther Valley School District, the district must choose which vital resources their students receive, and which they must go without.

Elementary school class sizes can reach 28, often with no teachers’ aides, even in kindergarten. At any given time in the small district, 10 teachers are filling in classes outside their certified subject. The district’s student population is growing rapidly, but there is no clear path to pay for the new school they need. Instead, elementary school students learn inside a 60-year-old building with no air conditioning, in a time of frequent heat waves.

This is not a Panther Valley problem, but a statewide tragedy that is playing out across the commonwealth: the triaging of the futures of hundreds of thousands of children, because of Pennsylvania’s inadequate system of funding public schools.

It means school principals in Greater Johnstown choosing which of their struggling readers get time with a reading specialist; teachers in overcrowded kindergartens in Delaware County deciding which of their students get attention and support; and educators in Shenandoah Valley teaching two classes at the same time in the same room.

As a landmark decision from Commonwealth Court in February in our school funding lawsuit made plain, the triage, along with the impossible choices it creates, is also unconstitutional. The court declared that insufficient state funding and an over reliance on local wealth deprive children of their rights to a contemporary, effective education.

As Gov. Josh Shapiro – who filed a brief in support of the case while attorney general – explained in his first budget address, the court’s well-supported decision was almost certain to stand. And indeed, it was not appealed.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do right by our kids, to fund our schools,” the governor said.

The next stage in this journey – deciding how much more funding is needed and how to provide it – is happening now. The Basic Education Funding Commission, a bipartisan panel of legislators and Shapiro administration staff, has been working to develop a plan for a new funding system. Testimony the commission heard from across the state repeatedly echoed the same themes: State funding is inadequate, and inequity is its defining feature.

The commission’s January 11 deadline to issue its report is less than a month away. It is a fork in the road for the future of the commonwealth.

On one path, the commission will lay out a transparent and evidence-based proposal for “a system of public education … that provides for every student to receive a meaningful opportunity to succeed academically, socially, and civically,” as Commonwealth Court charged them to do. In his next budget address, which will take place the day before the one-year anniversary of the court ruling, Gov. Shapiro will use the commission’s report to lay out a vision for a public school system that works for all children. Legislation can then be enacted to fix the system once and for all.

On another path, the commission and those who appointed them will shirk their critical role. The General Assembly will continue to provide school funding based on what is political and convenient, instead of what students need. Rather than celebrating a bipartisan transformation of the future of Pennsylvania, this is a path that will take state officials right back to the same court that already ruled the system broken.

Reforming our system is no small task. As the commission heard, Pennsylvania’s underfunding is profound: 412 of 500 school districts have inadequate resources, with the greatest shortfalls in the poorest communities. The students who need the most have the least. It will cost more than $6.2 billion to provide these children with the same baseline funding that Pennsylvania’s academically successful school districts are currently spending on basic and special education, factoring in each district’s student needs.

Ultimately, the solution that should be adopted by the Basic Education Funding Commission, and eventually the General Assembly and governor, is straightforward:

• Close the $6.2 billion adequacy gap within five years, with a substantial first-year investment of $2 billion.
• Provide the additional funding needed to repair hazardous, outdated school facilities and increase access of eligible children to preschool.
• Ensure that all existing education line items keep pace with inflation; and
• Set a reasonable schedule to provide this funding so that children currently in school will see the benefits.

The petitioners that brought this challenge will uphold the rights of their communities and of Pennsylvania’s children to the education they deserve. Rather than staring down enforcement litigation, the governor and General Assembly can get this right.

They can place themselves in history as the bipartisan body that seized a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring Pennsylvania into the 21st century and provide all students with the educational support and resources they need, deserve, and now legally must receive. Whether they do so will soon become clear.

Claudia De Palma is a senior attorney at the Public Interest Law Center, and Maura McInerney is the legal director of the Education Law Center. The two law centers, along with O’Melveny, represent petitioners in the Pennsylvania school funding case.