This budget agreement is an important step to start closing funding gaps, but it does not ensure that students in every community can receive the high quality education they’re entitled to under the State Constitution.

Petitioners argue that the state legislature fails to meet the PA State Constitution’s guarantee of a high-quality education for every child and discriminates against students in poor districts.

In an amicus brief filed Monday, May 16, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the state’s top law enforcement officer, argues that the Pennsylvania State Constitution guarantees all students the right to receive a high quality public education, and that Pennsylvania’s current school funding system fails to meet that standard. Five other amicus briefs were filed in support of petitioners.

In a post-trial submission filed May 2, 2022, school districts, parents and statewide organizations who brought the case challenging Pennsylvania’s school funding system detailed the evidence they provided during the four-month trial, and what conclusions they believe Commonwealth Court should reach in the historic case.

The parties in Pennsylvania’s historic school funding lawsuit will meet in Commonwealth Court once more in July, according to a new scheduling order from the court. The four-month trial in the case William Penn School District et al. v. PA Department of Education et al. concluded on March 10, and parties are currently preparing required post-trial filings. The court order announced that oral argument on legal issues in the case will be held on July 26, 2022, in Harrisburg.

“But I am here today because our leaders in Harrisburg have created a school funding hunger games that makes it impossible for low-wealth districts to provide that support for their children.”

Presenting closing arguments for the school districts, parents, and organizations who filed this lawsuit, attorney Katrina Robson emphasized the principal point:

“Let me say it again, because it’s the whole case. Low-wealth districts do not have the resources that they need to prepare all children for college, career and civic success.”

After 48 days in the courtroom, witness testimony in the Pennsylvania school funding trial concluded Tuesday, with petitioners presenting their rebuttal case. They called just one witness: Professor Matthew Kelly of Penn State University, who previously testified as an expert on Pennsylvania’s school finance system on Nov. 19 in petitioners’ case-in-chief.

For the final witness in their case defending Pennsylvania’s current school funding system, legislative leaders on Wednesday called an economist and longtime critic of school funding increases who has testified in 24 previous school funding lawsuits: Dr. Eric Hanushek. Hanushek is a senior fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Attorneys for the state’s legislative leaders came close to wrapping up their case Wednesday as they called to the stand their ninth and tenth witnesses: a cyber charter official and an economist. The cyber charter official who testified was Brian Cote, who since 2019 has been the director of curriculum, instruction, and assessment at 21st Century Cyber Charter School, which currently enrolls 1,600 students in grades 6-12 from across Pennsylvania.

Monday’s witness called by legislative respondents in the school funding trial, Max Eden, testified that Pennsylvania schools are well funded, that research is inconclusive as to whether additional financial resources boost academic achievement, and that additional school spending can be counterproductive.

Eden, who spent a full day on the stand, is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a public policy think tank.

The cross examination of Jason Willis, legislative respondents’ expert witness on Pennsylvania’s school funding system, dominated Friday’s court proceeding in the school funding case.

Willis, a researcher and program director at WestEd, a nonprofit education-focused research agency, gave detailed testimony Thursday based on the expert report he prepared in the case on behalf of legislative leaders.

On Thursday, court heard the conclusion of testimony from Dr. Maurice Flurie, the former CEO of Commonwealth Charter Academy (CCA), Pennsylvania’s largest cyber charter school, who responded to cross examination about CCA’s low test scores and graduation rates and the millions of dollars of taxpayer funds the school spends on advertising each year.

On Tuesday, legislative leaders called to the stand Dr. Maurice Flurie, the former CEO of Commonwealth Charter Academy (CCA), Pennsylvania’s largest cyber charter school.

Monday’s court session in the school funding trial ended early when attorneys for legislative leaders withdrew their witness, after a petitioners’ attorney pointed out numerous examples of apparent plagiarism in the witness’s expert report.

English learners and their performance on standardized tests were the focus of the school funding trial on Thursday afternoon and Friday as Republican legislative leaders called Christine Rossell, a professor emerita of political science at Boston University, as an expert witness.

The school funding trial shifted gears on Wednesday, as the legislative respondents in the case, Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman and House Speaker Brian Cutler, called their first witness.

In this trial about funding for public education, their first witness was Aaron Anderson, CEO and head of school at the Logos Academy, a small K-12 private Christian school with 225 students in York, Pa.