July 11, 2024 — Commonwealth Court’s school funding decision requires something plain from state officials: a plan “to provide all students in every district throughout Pennsylvania with an adequately funded education.”

Pennsylvania children still await such a plan.

But even though legislators artificially reduced the size of the state’s funding shortfall by undercounting students in poverty, at least now there is bipartisan agreement that adequately funded education requires, at minimum, an additional $4.5 billion, distributed to the communities that need it most.

The first step to fixing a problem is admitting it exists. While understating the problem, state officials of both parties now agree that there is a massive adequacy gap.

And the funds distributed this year through the new adequacy formula are critical, desperately needed, and will be used to hire the teachers, tutors, and counselors that students deserve.

But the second step to fixing a problem is actually fixing it.

Students need public schools that provide the support they need to reach meaningful opportunities today, not some day in the far future. And the same budget legislation that admits the scope of the Commonwealth’s constitutional shortfall still leaves nearly 90 percent of that hole to be filled by some undefined date in the future, or not at all.

The Pennsylvania Constitution requires more. The governor and General Assembly have acknowledged the wide scope of the problem. Now, they must identify the timeline by which the students of Pennsylvania will receive the funding the Constitution demands and do so with the urgency that children deserve and need.