As proceedings in the Pennsylvania school funding trial resumed Thursday following the holiday recess, Commonwealth Court heard from Jane Harbert, the former superintendent of William Penn School District, one of the petitioners in the case.
Jane Harbert retired in 2020 after 47 years in education. She spent 14 years in the district, including four years as superintendent and seven as director of schools. Harbert was with the district when the school funding lawsuit was filed in 2014. Her successor as superintendent, Dr. Eric Becoats, is expected to testify after Harbert concludes her testimony on Friday.
“It is our responsibility as adults to make sure students have the resources, and the curriculum, and the materials they need to learn,” she told the court. Her testimony will continue Friday, and we will share more about her testimony when it concludes.
Located just southwest of Philadelphia, the district serves more than 4,900 students in six suburban communities: Aldan, Colwyn, Darby, East Lansdowne, Lansdowne, and Yeadon. The district has eight elementary schools, a middle school, and two high school campuses: Cypress Street, serving grade 9, and Penn Wood High School, serving grades 10-12. According to PA Department of Education data, 58% of district students are economically disadvantaged, and 5% are English learners; 88% of the district’s students are Black; 4% are Hispanic, 4% are white, and 1% are Asian.
William Penn does not have the affluent tax base of some of its neighbors to support their schools. Residents are making immense efforts to support their students with local revenue, paying 35 equalized mills, the second highest tax rate in Pennsylvania. But insufficient state funding still leaves this low-wealth district short $4,836 per student from a state benchmark for adequate funding.
“I believe that our students have normalized their deprivation,” Harbert wrote in a 2018 affidavit. “That should not continue.”
Harbert follows two witnesses from the William Penn School District who testified on the last day of trial before the holiday break: athletic director Rap Curry and kindergarten teacher Nicole Miller. Their testimony was covered by Keystone Crossroads and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Miller described a typical day as the only adult in a classroom with 25 students.
From the Keystone Crossroads report:
Miller said the [English language arts] program was designed with the assumption that there are other adults in the classroom who can help out with the small groups, but she’s on her own and only has time to work with two of the five breakout groups each class.
If a student is practicing something wrong, it might take a couple days for her to catch it.
“Say they’re practicing a particular letter, and they’re sorting what picture goes with the ‘T’ and what picture goes with the ‘N,’ and they’ve learned it the wrong way,” Miller said. “If that happens Monday and I don’t see them until Wednesday, then a misconception is formed.”
At this age, she said, the first way you learn something sticks, “so I’m trying to unstick something they’ve learned incorrectly.”
Miller spends her limited, more individualized time with that student “unpacking what they’ve been practicing incorrectly for two days and really, all that was needed was another me to intervene for maybe two minutes.”
Follow Friday’s testimony, beginning at 9 a.m., at www.fundourschoolspa.org/trial