Last week our partners at the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center released a report that found Pennsylvania allocated $174 million of federal COVID-19 aid backwards—with the fewest dollars going to school districts with the greatest need.

We flagged this issue after the partial state budget was passed in May.

The COVID-19 pandemic stripped away any pretense that public schools in Pennsylvania are operating on a level playing field. One might have imagined that lawmakers would have used their own Basic Education Funding formula to distribute emergency federal aid to school districts to ensure funding would reach students with the greatest needs.

But that is not what happened.

Instead, Pennsylvania’s Republican-controlled General Assembly created the COVID-19 Disaster Emergency School Health and Safety Grants for 2020-21 program and provided $200 million in federal aid through the following distribution: each intermediate unit, career and technical center, charter school, and cyber charter school received $90,000. Each school district received $120,000 and about $67 per student in their district.

What was the impact of using this distribution?

The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center report finds that

Pennsylvania got the distribution of these funds backwards in the sense that the districts with the greatest need received the least funding per student. We measure need in the same way the legislature does through the BEF formula. The formula includes poverty as one indicator of need because research indicates that districts that have higher shares of students living in poverty require additional funding to meet state educational standards. Racial composition of students—i.e., the share who are Black and Hispanic—is also associated with need, with more students of color being English Language Learners and having higher poverty rates.

Click HERE for a spreadsheet of school district funding distribution rank ordered by percentage of households in poverty.

Click HERE for a spreadsheet of school district funding distribution rank ordered by percentage of Black students.

Click HERE for a spreadsheet of funding distribution rank ordered by school district percentage of Hispanic students.

As the report states:

In light of the nation’s heightened awareness in the year 2020 of inequality, especially racial injustice, these are stunning findings. No matter what the intentions or logic behind the distribution of this funding, its impact is clear: schools with the highest density of poor, Black, and Hispanic students received less funding than those with the least density, further entrenching existing inequities.

Inadequate public education funding has been a longstanding and devastating problem in Pennsylvania, particularly in communities of color and areas of concentrated poverty.

If the state has discretion over additional federal aid to schools, it must be distributed in a way that does not shortchange districts that are struggling the most.

And in 2021, state lawmakers must make a commitment to leveling-up funding for districts that have the fewest resources available to meet their students’ needs.