Two weeks before Gov. Josh Shapiro delivers his second budget speech, Pennsylvania House Democrats’ lead budget negotiator said lawmakers must address education equity in 2024.
State Rep. Jordan Harris (D-Philadelphia) said Monday he is confident the General Assembly will act to implement the recommendations of a bipartisan commission tasked with developing a plan to comply with a Commonwealth Court order to overhaul Pennsylvania’s public education funding system.
But Harris, the chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee, said the state needs to reassess its education system more broadly, including charter schools and programs that operate taxpayer money to provide scholarships to private schools, to make sure every student gets a high-quality education.
Nearly a year ago, Commonwealth Court Chief Justice Renee Cohn Jubelirer ruled that the state’s reliance on property taxes to fund public schools was unconstitutional because it disadvantaged students from less affluent areas. Republican lawmakers who defended the funding program against a lawsuit by six school districts and parents decided not to appeal.
“When you take into account the fact that there was no appeal of this decision, I think everyone agrees that something has to be done about this,” Harris said during a question-and-answer session at a Pennsylvania Press Club luncheon in Harrisburg on Monday.
Earlier this month, the Primary Education Financing Commission accepted the report meaning Pennsylvania must escalate education spending by $5.4 billion over the next seven years to provide adequate funding for hundreds of school districts. About $300 million of that would be the responsibility of districts that have kept taxes down despite education shortfalls.
At the same time, the report said, the state should provide nearly $1 billion in tax relief to districts where property owners pay the highest tax rates. It should also provide an additional $200 million through an updated formula to eliminate year-to-year variations and spend $300 million more each year to improve school buildings.
GET MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Public education advocates who filed a lawsuit seeking fair funding on behalf of districts and parents said they wouldn’t hesitate to go back to court if government officials do not take action.
“I think we have no choice but to respond strongly to the Commonwealth Court judgment and do the work that is in the BEFC report,” Harris said. “I think there are some other bits and pieces that will be added, but I think that… it’s something we have to do.”
During his speech, Harris spoke about growing up in South Philadelphia and his grandmother’s path from being a single mother raising three children in the projects at the Community College of Philadelphia to earning a degree in early childhood education from Temple University.
“If CCP hadn’t existed and if it hadn’t been for the programs my grandmother offered, the calculus of my life would have looked very different,” Harris said, noting that it allowed his mother to earn a degree and him to earn two.
Asked what he would do as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee to gain bipartisan support for expanding the private school scholarship program that Shapiro backed away from in his first budget last year, Harris said it would have to be part of a discussion about the full range of publicly funded education programs Pennsylvania offers.
“I have always been clear about my position on education, and my position is based on the education I received in the Philadelphia School District,” said Harris, who has also been a teacher in the school district and in a public school.
But he added that lawmakers need to evaluate how state and local school districts are managing publicly funded charter schools, noting that a report last year found that while there was no intentional bias, there were troubling patterns in the way black-run charter schools in Philadelphia were treated.
Harris also said existing taxpayer-funded private school programs — the Education Investment Tax Credit and the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit — are not accountable and have only recently had money earmarked specifically for low-income students.
“We have a problem with the quality of education in this commonwealth,” Harris said. “And I’ve always said our options are tools in a toolbox… So we really need to look at all the tools.”
To do this, education actors must abandon the notion that they are in an adversarial relationship with those who disagree with them about the best way to educate their children.
“What we really need is for everyone to come to the table. You need district-run schools, you need brick-and-mortar charters, you need online charters, you need the private school sector, because those are all Pennsylvania kids,” Harris said.
