Court heard Wednesday from the leader of the final petitioner school district to testify in the school funding trial: Brian Costello, superintendent of the Wilkes-Barre Area School District.

On Tuesday, court heard a different perspective from Dr. Nancy Hacker, a retired educator who served as superintendent of the School District of Springfield Township from 2012 to 2020. Unlike most other districts in Pennsylvania, Springfield Township has the resources it needs to allow students to meet state standards, according to a state benchmark for adequate funding. Its current revenue, adjusted for student need, of $21,674 per student ranks 45th out of 499 school districts.

“I'll take every dollar we can get, and we can certainly put it to good use,” the finance chief for Philadelphia schools told the court on Monday, “but we were behind to begin with, and it hasn't caught us up.”

Uri Monson, chief financial officer of the School District of Philadelphia for the past six years, was referring to the state’s funding formula and its failure to resolve the “structural deficits” facing Philadelphia schools…

Commonwealth Court had an opportunity on Monday to hear from one of the many youth who are most directly impacted by Pennsylvania’s school funding problems. A recent high school graduate, 20-year-old P. Michael Horvath took the stand. Horvath was educated in the Wilkes-Barre Area School District, graduating in 2019, and he and his mother Tracey Hughes are Wilkes-Barre residents.

Professor Rucker Johnson, a leading researcher on the impact of changes in school funding on student achievement and life outcomes, has taken a systematic and comprehensive approach in his econometric studies. His conclusion is clear.

“School funding, school resource equity, is an essential investment to advance student achievement,” he said during his testimony on Thursday.

Economist Clive Belfield, testifying as an expert witness for the petitioners in the school funding trial on Wednesday and Thursday, said there is a large body of research demonstrating the economic and social benefits of educational attainment.

“The research shows a robust, large, significant positive relationship between education and adult outcomes – lifetime outcomes,” Belfield said.

The school funding trial moved into a discussion of the economic impact of education Wednesday, hearing from the first of two economists who are testifying as expert witnesses this week. Dr. Clive Belfield, a professor at Queens College, City University of New York, was called by the petitioners to testify on the fiscal and social benefits that the commonwealth of Pennsylvania can derive from education spending.

Noe Ortega, the Pennsylvania Secretary of Education, testified that Pennsylvania has deep disparities in post-secondary attainment between low-income students and their wealthier peers, and between students of color and their white peers, in post-secondary attainment.

In a trial that has often probed the disparities between schools with different levels of resources, Philadelphia Superintendent William Hite spoke Tuesday and Thursday about the wide academic gap between two high schools that are just three miles apart:

The first witness from Pennsylvania’s largest school district, the School District of Philadelphia, took the stand Tuesday in Harrisburg: Dr. William Hite, the district’s superintendent since 2012.

Hite testified about his experience leading the district in the aftermath of large state cuts to funding for public education

Becoats said his biggest challenges have been operating a school district during a global pandemic when there are insufficient resources. It wasn’t until emergency federal aid arrived that the district was able to provide a Chromebook for each student in the district to learn remotely, and enough protective equipment and other infrastructure for in-person learning.

“It's a balancing act,” recalled Jane Harbert, who served for four years as superintendent of the William Penn School District and testified before Commonwealth Court on Thursday and Friday. “We have to continuously say, all right, what do our students need? What can we afford?”