Dive Brief:
- A number of Pennsylvania school districts, parents and the state's NAACP have filed a lawsuit against Gov. Tom Corbett, state education officials and legislative leaders, alleging that Pennsylvania is in violation of its state constitution by failing to provide adequate education for its students.
- The lawsuit is primarily based on the state's school funding formula, which the plaintiffs claim does not allow for necessary resources to be purchased and discriminates against low-income neighborhoods.
- Pennsylvania is one of only a few states that do not have a funding formula system, which means there is often a heavy reliance on property taxes. According to Philly.com, the gap in per-pupil spending ranges from 9,800 to $28,400 depending on where a student lives.
Dive Insight:
While Philadelphia schools were not included among the plaintiffs, the lawsuit did note that Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. publicly decried sparse staffs that were "insufficient to provide students an adequate education." Over the summer, Philadelphia cut $32 million from its school budget in order to start classes on time, and the city also closed over 30 schools in the past few years, cutting about 5,000 jobs.
A really interesting point that the lawsuit claims is that the state is holding schools to certain standards, but is purportedly not providing these schools with the resources and tools they need to properly teach to those standards.