School districts in Pennsylvania are challenging the constitutionality of the state’s education funding scheme and the way fiscal shortfalls have hobbled educators’ efforts to switch to virtual learning during the COVID-19 shutdown.
In a lawsuit originally filed in 2014, petitioners’ attorneys in William Penn School District et. al. v. Pennsylvania Department of Education et. al. contend that the legislature, governor, and Department of Education are not living up to the state constitution’s requirement to provide a “thorough and efficient system of public education to serve the needs of the Commonwealth,” according to court transcripts.
Pennsylvania’s 500 school districts draw funding from the state, local sources (mostly from property taxes), and the federal government. Long term budgetary shortages have meant that, at the height of the pandemic, low-income school districts could not afford to provide the tools for remote learning until months after the 2020 pandemic shutdown began.
“We only had approximately one-third of the devices necessary to be able to support online learning for students,” Brian Waite, superintendent of petitioner Shenandoah Valley School District, wrote in an email. “We also did not have knowledge of families that may have lacked connectivity and/or a device to be able to have the ability to learn online. We had no professional development for our staff leading up to March 13, 2020, so they were NOT prepared to instruct students online.”
“We only had approximately one-third of the devices necessary to be able to support online learning for students.”
Many students in the William Penn School District did not have adequate access to virtual learning during the pandemic shutdown, Superintendent Dr. Eric J. Becoats told The Progressive in a video call. The district covers ten public schools in a county bordering Philadelphia. Using federal COVID relief funds, the district distributed one Chromebook per household, which meant siblings in one home could not attend all of their virtual classes if instruction took place at the same time. Teachers offered limited virtual education to avoid such scheduling conflicts, Becoats testified, according to court transcripts.
The Panther Valley School District, another petitioner that is also in eastern Pennsylvania, did not have the money for technology or professional development to provide virtual learning until the school year after the 2020 shutdown. The district used federal COVID relief money to purchase Chromebooks for students, but it does not have enough money to replace them when they become obsolete.
In addition, students in many low-income districts across the state did not have the skills required to learn virtually because their schools could not afford to offer instruction on how to use the tech, Maura McInerney, legal director of the Education Law Center, which has represented some of the petitioners in the school districts' case, told The Progressive in an interview.
But despite the evidence of a lack of funding in low-income school districts, defendants in the lawsuit argued that the schools’ limited budgets did not amount to a violation of students’ fundamental rights. “We didn’t see anything in any of those presentations that establishes a constitutional violation,” Patrick Northen, who is representing Pennsylvania’s Republican speaker of the house Bryan Cutler in the suit, said during live streamed oral arguments in July.
Respondents’ attorneys also argued that, according to the state’s constitution, education is not a fundamental right, so the court has a lighter burden of proof in demonstrating that an important state interest justifies the current funding scheme. (Northen did not reply to an email seeking additional comment on the trial for this article).
Respondents’ attorneys argued that, according to the state’s constitution, education is not a fundamental right.
According to Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg, an attorney with The Public Interest Law Center (which provided legal representation for petitioners), Pennsylvania's constitution prioritizes public education above other state interests. “The question is,” Urevick-Ackelsberg says, “do children in this Commonwealth have an equal opportunity to that right? Has the right been impaired?”
In 2018 Judge Sarah Singleton ruled in Yazzie and Martinez v. State of New Mexico that the state violated students’ constitutional right to a “uniform and sufficient” education. Pennsylvania’s education clause does not require uniformity.
Plaintiffs in New Hampshire, Wyoming, and North Carolina have also sued their respective states over school funding.
If Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer rules the current funding regime is unconstitutional, then low-wealth districts could allocate their increased state funding to make up-to-date technology a part of every year’s budget, as the U.S. Department of Education recommends. Districts could afford to offer ongoing professional development to enable educators to stay abreast of technological innovations. They could regularly collect data on households that lack broadband with the goal of providing connectivity to all students. In all, increased state funding could lead to equitable learning for children with the most pressing economic needs.
Editor's note: This article was updated to include reference to the original filing of the William Penn School District case in 2014, and the fact that the Education Law Center represented some of the plaintiffs in this case.