by Peter Hall, Pennsylvania Capital-Star
With the next state budget a week overdue and the new school year fast approaching, education advocates rallied Monday in Harrisburg with an urgent message for lawmakers.
The legislature must follow through on its 2024 commitment to close the spending gap between the state’s wealthiest and poorest school districts, they said.
Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg, a senior attorney at the Public Interest Law Center, speaks at a rally for public education funding Monday, July 7, 2025, at the Pennsylvania Capitol. (Peter Hall/Capital-Star)
“While we recognize the significant financial challenges … many Pennsylvania school districts simply cannot begin the academic year without a fully approved state budget in place,” Indiana Area School District Superintendent Robert Heinrich said.
But even the wealthier school districts need lawmakers to do more to help them make the most of their taxpayers’ money, school board members and educators said.
They called on the General Assembly to pass legislation to limit what taxpayers must pay to cyber charter schools, block efforts to establish new private school voucher programs, establish accountability requirements for the educational tax credit programs that already exist, and provide more support for student teachers to ease the teacher shortage.
“We must pass the complete education funding proposal,” said Brian Waite, superintendent of the Shenandoah Valley School District in Schuylkill County, which was one of six districts that won a lawsuit against the state over its reliance on property taxes to fund public education. “Anything less continues the very inequalities the court found unconstitutional.”
After the Commonwealth Court declared Pennsylvania’s education funding system unconstitutional in 2023, the legislature determined that it needed to increase funding by $4.5 billion over the next nine years to close what it called “the adequacy gap.”
The 2024-2025 budget contained $500 million to be distributed under a new fair funding formula to about 370 school districts with inadequate resources.
In his proposed 2025-2026 budget, Gov. Josh Shapiro called for another $526 million in adequacy funding, plus $75 million more in basic education funding and a $40 million increase for special education that would be divided among all districts.
Heinrich said even if the legislature approves Shapiro’s budget, it will provide a fraction of what his district needs to keep up with skyrocketing costs.
“Despite our district’s efforts to cut costs and increase efficiency, we are still struggling to make ends meet,” he said. “The unfortunate result will be an increase in our local taxes and staff cuts — a higher cost for a more strained system in our community.”
Foremost on the list of legislative actions that would help public schools is a measure to cap cyber charter school tuition at $8,000 per student per year. Cyber charters are taxpayer-funded online schools. When a family chooses to send a child to a cyber charter, their home school district pays the tuition.
Critics argue that the tuition districts must pay bears little relation to the actual cost of providing an online education. As a result, the state’s largest charter schools amassed budget surpluses totaling $619 million between 2020 and 2023, according to a report by Republican state Auditor General Timothy DeFoor earlier this year.
The House has passed a bill to cap cyber charter tuition and it is now before the Senate.
The Senate Education Committee, meanwhile, advanced a bill to create a taxpayer-funded private school tuition voucher program.
Holly Arnold, president of the Tunkhannock Area School Board in Wyoming County, said vouchers are favored by those who would rather abandon public schools than give them the resources they need to address societal problems such as poverty, housing insecurity, hunger, mental health, and community violence.
“These are not just educational issues. They are societal issues that land on the desk of teachers, staff and administrators every single day across the state,” Arnold said, adding, “Creating yet another voucher program here in Pennsylvania doesn’t address these issues. It simply gives wealthy families a subsidy for attending private schools.”
Arnold noted that, according to the state Independent Fiscal Office, the existing Education Incentive Tax Credit and Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit programs, which allow businesses and individuals to obtain tax credits for contributing to private school scholarship funds, lack accountability.
Shapiro’s budget also includes an increase in the state’s student teacher stipend program, which is designed to lower economic barriers to becoming a teacher by helping college students with their expenses while gaining classroom experience.
The program began last year with $10 million in funding. While thousands applied, only hundreds were able to receive funding. Later, during budget negotiations, the program received an additional $20 million, though it was still not enough to cover many applicants.
“Far too many promising future educators are forced to walk away because they simply cannot afford to work for free while also paying tuition,” said Samantha McNally, president of the Manheim Township Education Association in Lancaster County. “If we are serious about equity, not just for students, but for the future of the education profession, we must invest in student teacher stipends.”
Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg, a senior attorney at the Public Interest Law Center, said he’s hopeful the legislature will agree on educational adequacy funding without controversy this year after laying the groundwork with strong bipartisan support last year. Cyber charter reform is a critical next step, but the scope of the adequacy gap is well beyond any single aspect of the education budget.
“I want to be realistic that the solution to underfunded schools is a lot more funding,” Urevick-Ackelsberg said. “That’s just the reality of it. We’re billions of dollars in a hole. We’ve got to climb out of it.”
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