Pa.’s underfunded schools got millions more in state money this year. What are they spending it on?

After years of battling Pennsylvania to level the playing field with wealthier school districts, some of the state’s poorest districts got a new influx of money this year to bring them closer to that goal.

The $500 million increase in state funding was just the first step of a nine-year plan to send $4.5 billion to districts deemed inadequately funded or overburdened by local property taxes. While the added money — part of a $1 billion increase that went to all public schools — didn’t close the gaps in a school funding system that was ruled unconstitutional last year by a Commonwealth Court judge, it did mean big changes for some communities.

In Norristown, for instance, district officials say they have continued to hire staff, including reading specialists, and have achieved class sizes on par with affluent suburban districts.

Some other districts, meanwhile, say the money has mostly allowed them to stave off cuts. “It’s not nearly what we really need,” said Upper Darby Superintendent Dan McGarry, whose district got a more than $10 million increase from the state this year, but still had to dip into its fund balance and raise taxes to make up for declining real estate revenue.

With the next budget season approaching, Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg, a senior attorney with the Public Interest Law Center who successfully sued Pennsylvania to make school funding changes, said the state needs to stick to the plan to ramp up funding by $4.5 billion so districts “can finally get some stability and continue to make some real investments.”

Here is a look at how some school districts spent the new money this year — and what they are still lacking.

Pennsylvania has traditionally relied more heavily than other states on property taxes to fund public education. Because there are wide gaps in wealth between communities, there are large funding disparities between school districts — with poorer districts often taxing themselves at higher rates than wealthier ones, but still unable to produce as much revenue.

The new school funding system approved by lawmakers earlier this year tries to address that inequity, both by calculating how much more money a district needs to reach “adequate” funding, and by sending “tax equity” payments to districts with the greatest tax burdens.

Districts like Norristown and Pottstown — both beneficiaries of the new funding formula — used some of the new money to keep taxes flat, saying their communities cannot afford to pay more. In Norristown, it was the fourth year in a row of no tax increases, said Superintendent Christopher Dormer; prior to that, the district had raised taxes by 35% over the last 12 years.

“We were on a path that was unsustainable,” said Dormer, whose district, which has a budget of $207 million, got nearly $10 million more from the state this year.

During the trial that led to Pennsylvania’s school funding being declared unconstitutional, school districts suing the state described overcrowded classrooms and insufficient supports for students.

With the added money, leaders in other inadequately funded districts say they have been hiring more staff. Norristown this year added 59 positions; 21 were paraprofessionals that the district previously had contracted from outside agencies.

Other hires occurred in prior years, when Norristown and other districts received added state money through an earlier program targeted to the poorest districts.

The 8,000-student district now has 17 reading specialists to provide additional support to struggling students; two years earlier, it had none, Dormer said.

Norristown also began offering Spanish at middle schools. But an ongoing teacher shortage has complicated plans, Dormer said: After creating three Spanish teacher positions, the district has hired only one fully certified teacher. A second teacher was emergency certified, and the district is still trying to fill the third.

The investments are paying off, Dormer said, noting that most grade levels saw better-than-average growth last year on state standardized tests.

» READ MORE: How did your school perform on the PSSAs? 2024 scores are out.

“I think we just need the benefit of time to allow kids to go through a system that’s resourced the way it should be,” he said.

Like Norristown, Pottstown also has added staff over the last few years, including for a specific mission: improving the culture in a middle school where fights often broke out.

“We literally had a physical altercation … every other day,” said Pottstown’s superintendent, Stephen Rodriguez. To curb the unrest, the district decided to move to a “house model” for the middle school, Rodriguez said — doubling the number of assistant principals from two to four, so each grade has an administrator in charge. It also doubled the number of middle school counselors from two to four. The assistant principals and counselors stay with each class of students as they advance to the next grade.

The personnel changes have cost the district — which got more than $4 million in additional state money this year — more than $500,000 annually. But as principals and counselors have been able to give kids more attention, “our suspension rates have gone through the floor,” Rodriguez said. The number of suspensions at the middle school dropped from 448 between August 2022 and March 2023 to 246 for the entire school year in 2023-24, Rodriguez said. This school year, he said, there wasn’t a fight at the middle school until mid-October.

“We had enough people to stop the violence that was going on in some of our under-resourced schools,” Rodriguez said.

In some districts, the added money has allowed them to maintain what they already have — particularly as federal COVID-19 money runs out. “This year’s funding meant we didn’t have to lay off staff,” said Eric Becoats, superintendent of the William Penn School District — one of the six school districts that sued the state over inadequate funding. “It was critical to receive and we are grateful for it, but 10 years after we filed the lawsuit, and almost two years after we won it, we are barely keeping our head above water.”

In Upper Darby, new investments have been minimal, said McGarry, the district’s superintendent. It added a few positions to support the district’s English-learner population — which has been growing on average by two students a day, McGarry said — as well as staff for autistic support classrooms. That population has been growing by 15 to 20 students a year, McGarry said; for every eight students in the autistic support program, the district is required to open a new classroom, with an additional teacher and support staff.

Meanwhile, as homeowners have been winning appeals over a countywide reassessment, local revenue has been declining, McGarry said. Upper Darby, like other cash-strapped districts, has aging facilities and extensive repair needs. McGarry is also fighting to keep staff from leaving for other districts after the township enacted a new 1% earned income tax.

His areas of focus are increasing employee pay and improving facilities, which “creates stability in a community,” McGarry said. But he said that’s impossible unless the state plugs the $4.5 billion hole for inadequately funded districts. (Upper Darby, for instance, is still owed $60 million more from the state under the adequacy formula.)

“If I don’t get those dollars, how can you expect student achievement to go anywhere? It just won’t,” McGarry said.

While legislators have acknowledged the scope of the state’s underfunding, they should write a timeline for remedying it into law, rather than just pledging to add money each year, said Urevick-Ackelsberg of the Public Interest Law Center.

This year was “really just the start,” Urevick-Ackelsberg said. Districts need to be able to plan, “as opposed to waiting to see what happens.”