Penn Wood High School in the William Penn School District in Lansdowne, Delaware County, June 15, 2023 (Amanda Berg as Capital-Star)
Tucked away in the code bill passed with the state’s 2025-2026 budget is a provision that would provide one school district with $5 million, on top of the typical formulas used to allocate funds among Pennsylvania school districts.
The bill did not name the county, but specified that the money be given “in a second Class A county that has a 2021-2022 daily membership of more than 5,590 to less than 5,595.”
It could only be William Penn of Delaware County, represented by House Speaker Joanna McClinton (Philadelphia).
William Penn has been struggling financially for years and was one of six school districts to cite a lawsuit that led to the 2023 invalidation of Pennsylvania’s method of giving money to schools. The Commonwealth Court found it unconstitutional.
According to Jennifer Hoff, who serves on the School’s Board of Directors. William Penn and chairs its Budget and Finance Committee, district officials have asked lawmakers to advocate for additional funding — as they do every year — during negotiations for the latest state budget.
Hoff said William Penn needed money even more than usual this year because the state budget impasse forced the district to borrow and take on interest to make up for delayed Commonwealth funding.
“William Penn has long fought and defended itself on funding issues,” Hoff said. “We have to be properly financed. That’s what caused the problem and that’s what perpetuates the problems. It’s more expensive to be poor than to be rich. Insurance rates are going up and borrowing is more expensive. That’s where William Penn is. We never get ahead, and it’s a government-made problem.”
At least more than two dozen other school districts also took out loans and incurred interest, according to the report Pennsylvania State Education Association.
Asked why the William Penn School District received additional funding, Beth Rementer, spokeswoman for the House Democratic Caucus, said in a statement: “The guiding principle of the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives has always been and always will be helping the least advantaged. The scope of activities represented by our leaders overlaps some of the poorest areas. Maybe that’s a good thing.”
Rementer did not respond to follow-up questions about whether specific issues make William Penn’s financial needs higher than other districts.
Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg, a senior attorney at the Public Interest Law Center who represented William Penn in the case that led to the creation of the adequacy formula, provided some clarity about the district’s unique needs.
William Penn was recently found is struggling with a $9.2 million deficit after record-keeping problems and an inadequate budget were revealed. That prompted the school district to consider staff reductions, including administrators and academic interventionists who work one-on-one with struggling students.
“I think context matters,” Urevick-Ackelsberg said. “This is a district that has ruled against the state for unconstitutional underfunding, and their budget situation, if anything, is even worse than previously thought… This has been a disaster for them.”
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Deirdre Abrahamsson, a spokeswoman for William Penn, said the district has taken steps to ensure similar accounting problems do not arise again.
“We have implemented new internal controls and updated financial procedures to standardize record keeping and documentation,” she said. Staff received training in purchasing, payroll and budget reporting to ensure consistency and compliance across all schools and departments. Oversight and accountability were also increased, with more recurrent internal reviews and closer collaboration between the business office, administrators and auditors.
According to school board member Hoff, the district is still deciding what to do with the $5 million from the state.
The money is likely to be used to expand mental health education programs and services. Because the funds are a one-time cash infusion rather than recurring revenue, the district is cautious about allocating them to recurring costs such as staffing costs, Hoff said.
Kayla Anderson, a spokeswoman for Gov. Josh Shapiro, who was a key negotiator for both the 2024-25 and 2025-26 budgets, did not respond to specific questions from the Capital-Star.
However, in a statement it said that the latest spending plan “takes seriously the need to provide dollars to schools that need them most to ensure that every Pennsylvania student has access to an appropriate and equitable education. The final budget agreement was the result of thoughtful and thoughtful negotiations with all leaders on both sides.”
Additional funding as part of Capitol compromise
This is the second year in a row that the state budget has included additional funding for school districts represented by House leadership members.
Last year, in the wake of the lawsuit, Democratic lawmakers pushed for adjustments to an adequacy funding formula designed to lend a hand disadvantaged schools. This ultimately led to the creation of 11 school districts receiving an additional $14 million per year – all represented by members of the Democratic Chamber, including members of the management. One of them was William Penn.
Democratic lawmakers said the move was the result of a compromise with Senate Republicans, who successfully pushed for changes to the adequacy formula that resulted in dozens of school districts — including 11 — receiving less funding than Democrats had hoped.
The compromise, they say, protects districts that actually need the money and are vital to House Democrats whose votes were crucial to passing the budget and ensuring the adequacy formula was implemented at all.
All 11 districts that received additional funding felt the changes to the adequacy formula proposed by Republicans. However, according to an Capital-Star analysis.
“There are 500 school districts across the commonwealth, and each has its own definition of what fair funding means,” Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R-Indiana) said in a statement. “For years, our Commonwealth of Nations has been dealing with formulas designed to bring about greater ‘fairness’, but there is no universally agreed definition of fairness. As we continue to fulfill our responsibility to support the educational opportunities of all Pennsylvania children, the issue of allocating dollars within an adequacy framework remains a topic of conversation. “
Urevick-Ackelsberg believes Democrats in the House of Representatives, led by McClinton, have shown they are in good faith advocating for better funding for K-12 elementary and middle schools throughout Pennsylvania, including rural areas represented primarily by Republicans.
“If I were to judge Speaker McClinton honestly, I think I would say that she is a really good advocate for increasing school funding. And I think that by any reasonable measure, this caucus has repeatedly approved both fiscal reforms and more aggressive funding increases, but has not passed both,” Urevick-Ackelsberg said.
While he would prefer broader changes to Pennsylvania’s school funding model that would lend a hand more schools, Urevick-Ackelsberg believes the $5 million for William Penn is a necessary expense for a district in crisis.
“William Penn is in a pretty unique position because the district, which was the lead plaintiff in the school funding dispute and which entered a judgment against the state, is facing an acute disaster,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any conclusion to be drawn other than to say we need to get this money out to all school districts more quickly.”
Originally, a seven-year plan to raise the state budget for struggling districts by $5.4 billion was presented by a committee of lawmakers and members of the Shapiro administration. They were charged with developing the plan in 2023 before the Commonwealth Court ruled that the state’s school funding formula was unconstitutional.
But lawmakers extended that deadline to nine years under pressure from the GOP Senate majority.
“We are not solving the problem as quickly as we need to,” Urevick-Ackelsberg said. “If you are a child starting kindergarten, you will be in ninth grade before schools start receiving adequate funding.”
