No Cuts and No Excuses: PA Budget Must Include Full Adequacy Funding for Public Schools
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, August 28, 2025
Contact: Lindsay Wagner, Education Law Center-PA, 215-701-4264, lwagner@elc-pa.org
Anna Sophie Tinneny, Public Interest Law Center, 267-546-1304, x224, astinneny@pubintlaw.org
HARRISBURG — All children in Pennsylvania are entitled to a comprehensive, contemporary, effective public education. Yet nearly two months past the Commonwealth’s budget deadline, 1.7 million public school students are returning to classrooms without state funding. While leaders wrangle over revenues and line items, one thing is not negotiable: the bipartisan adequacy funding commitment that seeks to deliver all children the education the Pennsylvania Constitution requires.
Last July, in a bipartisan agreement, the General Assembly measured the adequacy gap between what school districts have and what the state needs to provide them at $4.5 billion, and allocated $500 million towards closing that gap. Lawmakers must allocate at least that much again this year through the adequacy formula to continue closing the unconstitutional state funding gap.
Every day of delay harms children in both House and Senate districts, Democrats and Republicans alike.
“Our Constitution requires lawmakers to fund public schools adequately and equitably,” said Deborah Gordon Klehr, executive director of the Education Law Center-PA. “Instead, they are failing to do their most basic job—passing a budget. Pennsylvania children don’t get a do-over for the years they spend in underfunded classrooms.”
“A child’s right to a good public school cannot bend to Harrisburg horse trading,” said Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg, senior attorney at the Public Interest Law Center. “Adequate funding means smaller class sizes, safe and modern facilities, and qualified staff in every classroom. The General Assembly started us on that path last year. They must keep going.”
In February 2023, the Commonwealth Court ruled that Pennsylvania’s school funding system is inequitable, inadequate, and unconstitutional — a landmark decision that made clear the state has a legal duty to fix the crisis. Last year’s bipartisan agreement to begin closing the adequacy gap was an important first step, but the pace of progress is far too slow, and this year’s budget stalemate risks stalling momentum altogether.
The General Assembly must act now to:
- Pass a budget without further delay;
- Invest at least $500 million in adequacy funding and work toward shortening the timeline for reaching funding adequacy;
- Increase funding for basic and special education; and
- Enact long-overdue cyber charter funding reform.
Pennsylvania’s students cannot afford more political gridlock. Lawmakers must stop dragging their feet and pass a budget that meets their constitutional duty to provide every child with the education they deserve.
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