Last week Governor Tom Wolf stood with PA public schoolchildren who are being harmed by our state’s current school funding system. He filed a response in PA’s school funding lawsuit urging the court to move the case toward trial expeditiously.

Maura McInerney, legal director for the Education Law Center, stated, “By opposing further delay, the Governor acknowledges that our children need and deserve prompt justice to remedy the inequity and inadequacy of Pennsylvania’s broken school funding system.”

Unfortunately, Republican leaders in the PA House and Senate did not agree with Governor Wolf. Instead of standing with schoolchildren, they doubled down on their opposition to the lawsuit and defended the current school funding system. Senator Scarnati filed a brief that argues chronic underfunding of schools causes no harm to children. House Speaker Mike Turzai argued that local control justifies gross disparities in spending from school district to school district.

In response to these filings, Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg, staff attorney at the Public Interest Law Center, stated, “We and our clients are eager to move this case forward as quickly as possible because every day the legislature delays through its legal objections is a day in which hundreds of thousands of students across the Commonwealth remain in grossly underfunded schools. The legislative leaders should be ashamed that they are denying reality, and wasting the time of our children, who will not get a second chance at the education they deserve once this case has been tried.”

What happens next?

During the first week of March, a three-judge Commonwealth Court panel will hear oral argument on  outstanding preliminary objections in the case in their courtroom in Philadelphia. The Court will take the argument into consideration and sometime after the hearing, determine next steps for the case.

What else is going on in Harrisburg?

Education savings account voucher legislation (Senate Bill 2) continues to lurk in the Senate Education Committee. We will keep you in the loop as we organize advocacy efforts in key legislative districts.

On Tuesday, February 6^th, Governor Wolf will give his budget address, which will include his proposal for education funding for 2018-2019. Look for our response to this proposal next week.

Lawsuit recap

On November 10, 2014, six school districts, the Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools, the NAACP – PA State Conference, and families whose children attend under-funded and under-resourced schools filed a case in the Commonwealth Court asking the court to:

• Declare that the current system of funding our schools unconstitutional;
• Order the defendants to cease using a funding system that does not provide adequate funding such that students can meet state standards and which discriminates against low wealth districts; and,
• Order the defendants to create and maintain a constitutional school funding system that will enable all students to meet state academic standards and does not discriminate against low-wealth school district.

In April 2015, the Commonwealth Court dismissed the case on the grounds that it presents a political question that cannot be addressed through the court system. The plaintiffs, represented by the Public Interest Law Center and the Education Law Center-PA, appealed this decision to the PA Supreme Court.

In September 2017, the PA Supreme Court issued a landmark decision. It ordered the Commonwealth Court to hold a full trial on PA’s school funding lawsuit.  The Court agreed with the plaintiffs that education funding should be subject to judicial review. They ruled that the courts have a duty to ensure that the state’s school funding system does not violate the state constitution or discriminate against students because of where they live or the wealth of their communities.

For a deeper dive click HERE to visit Public Interest Law Center’s website.