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For decades, Pennsylvania lawmakers have shunned their responsibilities when it comes to school funding, severely shortchanging many school districts.
The result is grave inequity that has affected generations of students and produced rising local tax rates for property owners asked to fill the widening financial gaps caused by a negligent General Assembly in Harrisburg.
In a trial that is now kicking into high gear, a group of petitioners from across Pennsylvania is challenging the state funding system in Commonwealth Court.
These petitioners, represented by the Education Law Center, Public Interest Law Center and O'Melveny, include six school districts, the Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools, the NAACP Pennsylvania State Conference, and families whose children attend inadequately funded, under-resourced schools.
This trial, which is expected to last into early 2022, will determine whether Pennsylvania's school funding system meets constitutional standards.
The petitioners will demonstrate that state officials are failing to provide a "thorough and efficient" education system as required under the Pennsylvania's constitution and are violating the state constitution's equal protection provisions.
We will lay out the case that, to achieve equity, we need adequate resources in all our schools, supported by adequate state funding.
The outcome will have significant ramifications for Blair County school districts and schools across the state.
Pennsylvania has established requirements for students -- to advance from one grade to the next, to graduate, to demonstrate they are college and career-ready -- but has failed to provide the resources to allow them to achieve the very goals we have set for them.
This difference between the funding that students need and what we provide them is called "the adequacy gap."
Credible research indicates that Pennsylvania's adequacy gap is at least $4.6 billion. This is a consequence of Pennsylvania's rank of 45th in the nation in the share of education costs funded by the state.
In 44 other states, state funds do a better job of filling the gaps in what districts can raise on their own. Pennsylvania must do better. And that's the reason we're in court right now.
When a state covers such a low share of education costs, the differences in resources between affluent and low-wealth school districts are appalling.
Pennsylvania's Black and Brown students pay the biggest price. Half of all Black students and 40% of Latino students are concentrated in the 20% of districts with the lowest wealth.
Despite some of the highest property tax rates in the commonwealth, these communities simply cannot raise enough money to fill the gap.
To be clear, though, this is not just a few schools falling through the cracks: In more than half the districts in the state, the gap is larger than $2,000 per student -- with gaps averaging $4,800 per student between the highest- and lowest-wealth districts.
Many of the schools in these underfunded districts are ill-equipped to offer their students a 21st century education.
Tangibly, the funding inadequacy doesn't mean not having the latest technology -- in many classrooms it means not having any technology.
It means crumbling buildings, shuttered libraries, little or no access to career training programs, no nurses to treat asthma attacks, and no counselors to help support students in school and help apply for scholarships for college.
Adequacy gaps exist in rural, urban, and suburban districts in every corner of the state: in Altoona and Spring Cove, in Shamokin and St. Clair, in Carbondale and Scranton, in McKeesport and Sharon City, in Philadelphia and Norristown.
The legislature could fix this if they wanted to, but they have chosen not to, passing the buck to local school districts. The current system is inadequate, inequitable, and unconstitutional.
The time has come to ensure, once and for all, that all students receive the quality education that they deserve, and our state constitution guarantees.
Deborah Gordon Klehr is executive director of the Education Law Center.