Senator Vince Hughes, Democratic chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. Lindsey Williams, Democratic chair of the Senate Ed Committee; Sen. Tim Kearney, member of the Senate Education Committee, and Democratic vice-chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Rep. Matt Bradford. Democratic chair of the House Appropriations Committee and Rep. Michael Schlossberg, House Democratic Caucus Administrator today put forward a bold proposal for new funding for Pennsylvania’s 500 school districts.
Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center strongly supports this proposal. It goes far towards eliminating the inequitable, inadequate funding that keeps 89% of the school districts in the state from meeting their responsibilities to our children. For years, we have pointed to Pennsylvania’s failure to provide adequate and equitably distributed funding to our school districts. The pandemic has made that failure even more evident. And the federal provision of ARP funds, as well as budget surpluses created by a faster than expected economic recovery, has given the state the opportunity to make a major new investment in our schools without raising new revenues.