What does Pa.’s state budget deal mean for Philly area K-12 schools?

The post-deadline budget deal reached by Pennsylvania lawmakers includes the biggest education funding increase of Gov. Tom Wolf’s tenure, adding $525 million to the main pot of money for K-12 public schools statewide.

The agreement, which cleared the state Senate Friday and now goes to the governor for final approval, would steer another $225 million to the poorest 100 of Pennsylvania’s 500 school districts — among them Philadelphia — along with other education funding increases.

But the new spending falls short of the nearly $2 billion “generational investment” in education that Wolf had pitched when he announced his budget plan earlier this year. And the Democratic governor signaled his agreement this week to other provisions that have been priorities of Republican legislative leaders — including a significant increase in the state’s program funding private school scholarships, and a rollback of new charter school regulations.

Here are some of the ways the budget deal is poised to impact education in the Philadelphia area this year:

The $525 million increase in basic education funding represents the largest-ever boost in Pennsylvania’s main subsidy for public schools — a more than 7% increase over the current $7.1 billion appropriation.

That money will be distributed through a formula adopted in 2016 that sends more to school districts with greater shares of students living in poverty, among other needs.

Advocates for poorer districts say how the state doles out money is still inequitable, because the formula doesn’t apply to the bulk of education funding. To that end, the budget allots another $225 million through an initiative that began last year to a group of 100 districts deemed the state’s poorest, based on a comparison of their available resources and degree of student need. Philadelphia’s so-called Level Up money for 2022-23 will mean over $83 million; for Norristown, a little more than $2 million, according to lawmakers.

The funding increase “shows that many in Harrisburg recognize the depth of the hole our legislative leaders have dug for our students,” said Maura McInerney, legal director at the Education Law Center, which along with the Public Interest Law Center has been representing school districts — including Delaware County’s William Penn — in a case challenging Pennsylvania’s school funding as unconstitutional.

But the deal “does not ensure that students in every community can receive the high-quality education they’re entitled to under the state Constitution,” both law centers said in a statement. An expert witness for plaintiffs in the funding case testified that Pennsylvania schools may require an additional $4.6 billion or more to adequately educate students.

As in past years, the agreed-upon education spending increase is less than what Wolf had advocated. In February, the governor proposed a $1.8 billion increase for K-12 schools, including $300 million for the 100 Level Up districts. Republican lawmakers — who have consistently pushed back on the size of Wolf’s school spending proposals — disputed the surplus projections underlying Wolf’s plan.

Still, the deal was cheered Friday by groups like the Pennsylvania State Education Association. The president of the teachers union, Rich Askey, called it a “historic budget that will benefit the students of Pennsylvania,” and credited Wolf with making public education “his No. 1 priority since the day he took office.”

Private schools will also benefit from the budget deal, which includes a significant increase in funding for state tax credits to businesses and individuals who fund private school scholarships. The agreement adds $125 million for the tax credit programs, which have been championed by Republican legislative leaders and conservative groups, but fiercely opposed by public school advocates.

One of the groups backing the increase, the Commonwealth Foundation, said it would “provide approximately 31,000 additional K–12 students with educational opportunity,” and that 60,000 students benefited from the programs this year.

Critics say the programs lack accountability and take away from funding that could be going to public schools. Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, called the added spending “essentially a corporate tax break at the expense of our young people.”

The deal includes what appears to be another concession by Wolf: a rescinding of regulations on charter schools that the administration passed just a few months earlier, including accounting and audit standards and compliance with state ethics requirements, a more standardized process for opening new charters, and rules that the schools offer their teachers the same health benefits as district counterparts.

The regulations, passed by the state’s Independent Regulatory Review Commission, had been touted by the governor as a way to increase accountability and transparency for charter schools, which are publicly funded but independently run. But Republican lawmakers and charter proponents had opposed the changes — calling them overly burdensome — which Wolf had pushed while also pressing for a broader legislative overhaul to how charters are funded.

Meanwhile, the budget deal did not include any of the changes to the state charter law that Wolf and many school districts have been calling for, including a curbing of payments to cyber charter schools.

As the budget made its way through the legislature, districts like Philadelphia were still calculating exactly how it would impact them. Uri Monson, the district’s chief financial officer, said Friday he expected the district would receive about $200 million more than last year, including increases in basic education, special education, and the Level Up funding for the state’s poorest districts.

”There’s the good — it’s more,” said Monson. Also, “pushing more into Level Up is significant,” he said, because Philadelphia’s size means it receives about 40% of that total $225 million pie.

Other local districts slated to receive the added Level Up funding include Bristol Borough, Coatesville, Oxford Area, Chester Upland, Southeast Delco, Upper Darby, William Penn, Norristown, and Pottstown, according to House Democrats.

On the downside for Philadelphia, the allocation is less than what Wolf proposed, and the charter changes the district was hoping for — charter school expenses account for hundreds of millions in its nearly $4 billion budget — didn’t come through.

That means the school system will be paying more than it initially accounted for, Monson said. The district, already projecting a structural deficit, will be affected more in the later years of its five-year plan.