{"id":21743,"date":"2025-06-28T12:07:07","date_gmt":"2025-06-28T12:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/21743\/"},"modified":"2025-06-28T12:07:07","modified_gmt":"2025-06-28T12:07:07","slug":"pa-education-advocates-urge-passage-of-governors-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/21743\/","title":{"rendered":"Pa. education advocates urge passage of governor\u2019s budget"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? <a href=\"#Section1\">Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p>Advocates say the $526 million that Gov. Josh Shapiro has proposed in his 2025-2026 budget to address the chronic underfunding of Pennsylvania\u2019s most disadvantaged districts is a much-needed down payment in addressing decades of neglect.\n<\/p>\n<p>The funding is a consequence of a 2023 ruling by the Commonwealth Court that the state\u2019s education funding formula was unconstitutional. The Basic Education Commission calculated that the amount of underfunding was $4.5 billion.\n<\/p>\n<p>The governor\u2019s 2024-2025 budget included $1.1 billion for public education, with $494 million explicitly identified to address the funding disparity (what\u2019s called \u201cadequacy funding\u201d) and directed to 300 school districts that needed it the most.\n  <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a budget that began to address the judge\u2019s decision,\u201d said Deborah Gordon Klehr, executive director of the Education Law Center in Philadelphia (ELC). \u201cIt recognized an adequacy gap, calculated it and calculated the state\u2019s share at $4.5 billion and allocated $500 million towards filling that gap. We called it a start \u2014 that\u2019s 11% of the state\u2019s share needed to provide an adequate education to students.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, some Republican legislators have argued for more transparency in spending public education dollars.\n<\/p>\n<p>In May, state Rep. Jason Ortitay, R-46th District, introduced House Bill 1448, which would create a Financial Transparency Data and Reporting System for education spending that would allow legislators, school officials and state agencies to track how funds are spent and whether it is useful for students.\n<\/p>\n<p>Manuel Bonder, a spokesperson for Shapiro, said the governor is seeking compromise.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe governor has made it clear repeatedly he is focused on working together with leaders in both parties and both chambers to deliver a budget that delivers for families all across Pennsylvania,\u201d Bonder said. \u201cAt the center of that, of course, is funding for education \u2014 funding for our schools.\u201d\n        <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":21744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,1448,2830,18729,1311,10774,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-21743","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-pa","10":"tag-pennsylvania","11":"tag-pennsylvania-education","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-school-district-of-philadelphia","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}