Pennsylvania distributes billions of dollars of education funding based on enrollment numbers last updated in 1991. As a result, some wealthy school districts are getting far more dollars-per-student than others in lower-income areas. That’s one of the conclusions reached by a new report on inequities in how the commonwealth funds education, published Wednesday by the nonprofit advocacy group Public Citizens for Children and Youth. The report focuses on Pennsylvania’s ‘hold harmless’ policy. Enacted in 1991, it bars the state from funding school districts at levels lower than the prior year. When it was implemented, districts appreciated its guarantee of predictability, making it easier for school boards to make long-term plans. Over time, as the student enrollment plummeted in some places and surged in others, it’s added to the wide inequities that exist in Pennsylvania public schools. In 2016, the state passed a new student-based funding formula that more closely tied dollars to need, but lawmakers decided to use it only to distribute increases in aid. Five years later, nearly 90% of the state’s $6.8 billion basic education subsidy is still distributed based on hold harmless.  Advocates have been criticizing the policy for years. PCCY’s report found that the two-thirds of Pennsylvania school districts where enrollment has shrunk over the last thirty years receive far more funding per pupil from the state than the others that have grown. Pennsylvania’s Black and Latino students are the most negatively impacted: The report states more than 80% of them are located in growing school districts that would benefit tremendously by axing hold harmless and running all state funding through the 2016 formula.

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Source: WHYY, January 28, 2021.