When state funding failed to meet the growing needs of the Shenandoah Valley School District, students went without physical education, music and art classes.
Residents of the small Schuylkill County school district couldn’t afford a property tax increase. More than 30% of people in Shenandoah live in poverty — nearly three times the state average.
Student needs soared. As Hispanic enrollment grew to 60%, more students needed English learner classes. Studies have found the district needs about $10,000 more funding per student.
Superintendent Brian Waite focused on advocating for fair funding — and “minimizing collateral damage.”
“That's a strategy, and actually a leadership style I've taken upon. You won't find that in any book, but it's what we need to do here,” he said. “We have to decide, where are we going to help support? Where do we want to invest the support to help students that might be at risk and unfortunately, at the cost of other students due to funding and the lack of funding?”
Waite and other leaders say the budget approved by the state Legislature and signed by Gov. Josh Shapiro this month begins to address the funding system deemed unconstitutional by Commonwealth Court. But a strong commitment and greater predictability for the future are necessary, educators said.
Shenandoah Valley was one of six districts that brought the lawsuit against the state in 2014. Last year, Commonwealth Court ruled that the state’s current education funding system had to change but didn’t provide the framework to do it. The state’s Basic Education Funding Commission developed a seven-year funding plan in response earlier this year. The state House passed a bill in June that would commit the state to the funding plan, but the Senate did not act on it.
The 2024-25 budget funds the estimated $4.5 billion gap by about 10%, with no guarantee of what funding will look like in the future.
“If you base it on what they did, it's going to be a nine-year timetable if they move forward at the same rate that they're moving now,” Waite said. “So think about that. A kid coming into kindergarten, by the time we meet adequacy, is going to be in 10th grade. How many services could we put in place for them before they got in 10th grade? How much learning are they going to lose because they don't have the services that we can't give them from then until 10th grade?”
The Education Law Center and Public Interest Law Center, which helped bring the funding lawsuit, said that while the funds in the budget are critically needed, the state must fully fix the problem.
“Students need public schools that provide the support they need to reach meaningful opportunities today, not some day in the far future,” according to a statement released after the budget vote. “And the same budget legislation that admits the scope of the Commonwealth’s constitutional shortfall still leaves nearly 90% of that hole to be filled by some undefined date in the future, or not at all.”
The budget includes $526 million for adequacy and tax equity supplements for the districts that need it most. Districts will also see an increase in special education funding and $100 million to share for charter school reimbursement. Basic education funding, the largest funding source, increases by 3.6%.
In the Old Forge School District, leaders want to be able to offer Advanced Placement classes, or to move sports practices from a soggy field that must be sprayed for mosquitoes. The district raised taxes by 1.5% for this year.
“We're doing the best we can, but we need to do more for these students, and the only way that could happen is if we're funded appropriately through the state,” said Business Manager Brian Rinaldi.
The district in Lackawanna County has about 950 students. The adequacy gap is about $5,000 per student.
“If they just work to get us funded adequately, we'll do the rest on our own. We're more than capable,” Rinaldi said. “We have great people here. We have great administrators, great teachers, great community. They support the school district. They always have and they always will. We just need a little bit of help to be funded adequately and fairly in the state, and we'll be fine.”
In Shenandoah Valley, 1,250 students return to school in less than a month. With increased funding in recent years, some classes have returned. Students have physical education again, and elementary music was offered again last year. Elementary art returns this fall.
But as of now, the district doesn’t have the staff to provide the amount of English learner classes that students require.
“The students who need 90 minutes a day, we're happy if we can get them 90 minutes every other day,” Waite said.
With more funding, the district could hire interventionists to help elementary students struggling with literacy and math, he said.
“So what do I put first? How do we take care of those issues and those needs? We have to decide that every day here, not on a yearly basis, but every day, and how we're going to meet those needs,” he said.
The House Bill approved in June and not taken up by the Senate would provide nearly $12 million more — or $10,192 per student — for the district at the end of seven years.
The district will receive an additional $1.6 million in basic education and adequacy funding this year, distributed through the Ready to Learn Block Grant program.
“We're grateful for what we have, and we will be able to utilize it. But one of the things that it doesn't do for us, it doesn't help us plan after this year,” Waite said. “That's concerning to me, because it still puts me in that leadership style of minimization of collateral damage, and that's not the leadership style anybody wants to have to do.”
