School Funding: Do Pennsylvania Courts Have a Role?

Editor’s note: The author is involved in the William Penn School District case.

Since Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), few have questioned the importance of access to a quality system of public education to students and to the public at large. The basic issue of fairness in how public funds are distributed so that all are equitably supported is apparent, and we didn’t need a recently completed study by the Rand Corp.—which found the commonwealth’s disparities in education funding costs it billions of dollars in gross domestic product per year—to know that a state’s economy will improve when the caliber of its high-school graduates improve. For these reasons, both the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania bar associations adopted resolutions in recent years calling on the legislature to comply with its duty under the education clause of the state constitution to provide for the maintenance of a thorough and efficient system of public education and under the constitution’s equal ­protection provisions.