Pennsylvania’s school systems are entering the next school year with promises of historic increases to state funding levels — and a lengthy list of challenges.
Governor Josh Shapiro’s proposed budget for the coming fiscal year includes roughly $600 million in K-12 funding increases, including more than $520 million for its neediest school systems, $75 million in basic education funding, and $40 million for special education.
Funding would rise about 1 percent over the 2024-25 school year under the governor’s plan.
The funding is sorely needed, superintendents across the state say, as they grapple with continued challenges in achieving student learning goals, right-sizing their budgets for a post-ESSER funding era, and adapting to changes to federal aid and policies.
Pennsylvania’s school systems are also grappling with shifting student demographics, and adjusting to state efforts to legally mandate the implementation of science of reading-aligned practices in schools.
“Over the last five years, we’ve had unprecedented investments in public education. It’s been long overdue,” said Aaron Chapin, president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, a teachers’ union. The new infusion of state funding creates new opportunities, he said.
“Our members, my colleagues, are very excited about the direction we’re headed as we’re getting into budget season right now,” Chapin added.
Among some district officials, Shapiro’s robust spending plans are well-received, but still don’t go far enough to address what they say are systemic issues in how Pennsylvania school systems are funded.
Chief among the districts’ and advocates’ concerns is the phasing in of adequacy payments, or aid being disseminated by the state over seven years as part of its efforts to correct its current school funding formula. A state court in 2023 ruled that the formula was unconstitutional in that it did not not adequately supporting students.
(The aim of payments is to ultimately ensure every district has the resources to spend $13,704 per student.)
Districts also are continuing to push back against the commonwealth’s funding structure for its cyber charter schools, as education associations and district leaders say the rising financial burden tied to cyber charters is not fairly distributed.
Shapiro’s proposed budget is due to be finalized before July 1, the deadline and start of the new fiscal year. But negotiations with legislators in the statehouse have pushed adoption past the deadline in recent years.
State K-12 Funding Poised to Grow
Tony Watlington stepped into the role of superintendent of the school district of Philadelphia three years ago, and has worked to implement a number of systemwide changes to its financial strategies and its approach to curriculum.
The district, which has about 200,000 students, saw its enrollment increase for the first time in 10 years, he said, rising by nearly 2,000 students in the current school year. It’s also working to “right-size” its facilities in an effort to reduce unnecessary spending. In addition, the district’s seen its investment grade credit rating increase twice in the past three years.
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Shapiro’s budget includes a $160 million boost in state funding for the school district. Of that, $137 million comes directly from the adequacy payments, which are being phased in.
The district would reach that adequacy funding level in a little over 10 years based on that timeline, not including inflation over time.
Like other school systems around the country, the district faces major questions about the future of its federal funding.
The district has faced the loss of two federal grants so far as a result of cuts made by the Trump administration, including a $149,000 planning grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Service’s Urban School Library Restoration Project grant.
A U.S. Department of Agriculture grant to support local food purchasing is also on the cutting block.
Philadelphia is one of many districts around the state that is pressing to improve students’ reading and math performance. Its strategies for doing so include revamping its curriculum to focus on structured literacy and “science of reading”-aligned materials, and supporting teachers, Watlington said.
The number one strategy that is driving its successes is its support of teachers and providing them with high-quality curriculum materials that are standardized across the district, Watlington said. The district is budgeting more than $70 million for reading, math, and science curriculum upgrades.
Research-Based Strategy
Philadelphia showed the fastest improvement out of all big city districts in the country in math in grades 3-8 in 2022-23, and the second-fastest for reading recovery in grades 3-8, according to a Stanford University analysis published this year.
The most recent NAEP scores released in January showed that Philadelphia 4th graders made a 7 percentage point improvement in math, although progress in reading at the 4th and 8th grade levels and in 8th grade math were mostly flat.
“When you fund public education, and you’ve got a really focused strategic plan based on the research about what we know works — it works. We get better,” the superintendent said.
The district places a high value on ratings from EdReports, a nonprofit curriculum-evaluation organization, and it will only purchase materials rated green, or a high rating, on its metrics.
Philadelphia is launching a new English/ language arts curriculum from EL Education and is offering StudySync at the high school level to provide a mix of culturally responsive, engaging texts that can be translated into 160 languages.
The district also implemented the Illustrative Mathematics curriculum across all schools, a shift from its previous approach when it allowed schools to have a choice in using different curricula. Standardization is becoming increasingly important as students shift from neighborhood to neighborhood more often, Watlington said, and a common math curriculum helps minimize the disruption to their learning.
Exposing students to high levels of rigor and grade-level instruction is also essential to achieving the district’s goals for student learning, he said,
“We know that in places like Philadelphia, we can never remediate and tutor our way to excellence,” the superintendent said. “It has to be about what happens in that classroom and high-level instructional materials every day.”
The Philadelphia school district also has seen a roughly 10 percent rise in its scores for its high school career readiness exam, and a reduction in chronic absenteeism.
While Shapiro’s budget helps districts financially, by giving them money, there are still 152 districts that are losing state aid because of the implementation of the adequacy formula, which is allocated based on money that has been spent per pupil in the past, said Eric Eshbach, executive director of the Pennsylvania Principals Association.
Districts are also struggling to handle the legally mandated payments they must make to cyber charters, he said.
Currently, Pennsylvania school systems are mandated to pay cyber charters for each student in the district sending area who choose to attend one of the 13 cyber charters in the state, and must pay them the same dollar amount the district spends on the average student.
Shapiro’s proposed budget includes $111 million for mental health and school safety as well. The funding would support school safety initiatives and programs that help connect mental health providers to students, and provide safety and security grants and loans.
Kevin Busher, chief advocacy officer of the Pennsylvania School Boards’ Association, said the funding is essential to support students’ mental health needs.
But his organization is also working with state agencies and county governments to make sure those resources aren’t provided in a vacuum at school, and that challenges in students’ home environments prevent them from making progress on their goals.
“We want to make sure that those services are provided not only within the school setting, but at the county level, at the community level,” he said.
Core Subjects, and Student Mental Health
Pennsylvania has long given school districts broad authority over curriculum. But the state’s department of education has been working on ensuring districts implement science of reading-aligned materials and practices, which it refers to as structured literacy.
In 2024, the state passed Act 135, which created the Reading Leadership Council, an organization charged with building a list of high-quality programs and materials that are aligned to the science of reading.
The amount of money that is flowing from the federal government to our state to our schools, is doing so through a process that has taken years to get where it is.
Eric Eshbach, Executive Director, Pennsylvania Principals Association
As implementation of that bill is underway, the state legislature is also now considering what’s known as Senate Bill 700, which would go further and require districts to adopt evidence-based reading instruction curriculum.
The measure would also require districts to have a professional development program in place to train educators on structured literacy, and implement universal screening requirements and intervention plans for struggling readers.
The bill has bipartisan support, making it likely it will continue to advance, said Eshbach, of the Pennsylvania Principals Association. Many school officials have known that new reading standards are coming and have been preparing accordingly.
“Most of [our members] have read the tea leaves,” he said. “They’re complying with what is coming down the road in the future.”
Chapin, of the teachers’ union, said his organization appreciates having been allowed to provide input about the direction of new literacy standards, But it also wants to ensure districts still have leeway to make decisions at the local level about choosing specific curriculum materials.
Any shift should also come with a significant amount of professional development funding to help districts implement the approach. (Many states that have approved science of reading laws have also put an emphasis on new PD.)
The state needs to “give teachers the resources and instruction and development they need to be able to do it,” he said.
He’s also frustrated by the lack of “real plans” being put into place to support changes happening at federal K-12 policy levels, including the administration’s move to shift responsibilities handled by the U.S. Department of Education to the states.
The Trump administration has threatened to withhold federal Title I aid — which supports impoverished students — from states and districts, if their diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts run afoul of the White House’s vision to gut those programs.
The administration has also cut off states’ access to billions of dollars in remaining ESSER pandemic relief funds. And, more broadly, Trump’s education department appointees have advocated for delegating more power — though not necessarily more funding — to the states.
Pennsylvania is “not ready for this kind of transition,” he said, “and that really worries us. … It’s our most vulnerable students who are going to suffer if we don’t do the proper planning.”
Eshbach is concerned that even if changes to federal policy don’t change the level of overall funding significantly, it will cause major disruptions.
“The amount of money that is flowing from the federal government to our state to our schools, is doing so through a process that has taken years to get where it is,” he said.
Suburban Challenges
One of the districts working to get ahead of any state legislation focused on structured literacy is Council Rock School District in lower Bucks County.
The 10,500-student district, located in the northern suburbs of Philadelphia, spent about $2.4 million on implementing a new reading program, Reading Horizons, at the elementary level that aligns with the state’s goals for structured literacy.
The district is facing budget challenges for the 2025-26 school year, with its enrollment slowly declining. It has lost roughly 2,000 students over the past decade.
The shift has been gradual enough that state aid has remained mostly stagnant, Superintendent Andrew Sanko said. But with its overall costs regularly increasing, the district finds itself working to balance what began as a $14 million deficit. (A proposed increase in local taxes could ease the shortfall, as will spending cuts.)
The district is still, for example, moving ahead with the implementation of full-day kindergarten, paid for in part by a tax increase the previous year. It is also working to fund academic recovery programs that were previously supported by long-gone ESSER funding.
A District Adjusts to a Changing Student Population — and to Financial Uncertainty
When Brian Uplinger first stepped into the superintendent’s role at Hazelton Area School District in 2017, about 56% of the district’s 11,500 students identified as Latino.
Now, the Latino population in the district, which spans 256 square miles in the foothills of Northeastern Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains, is nearing 70%, with 13,700 students. The local population boom is largely driven by an increase in distribution-focused industrial development and need for a larger workforce, Uplinger said.
The district is still enrolling students for the current school year. The superintendent said the incoming kindergarten class for the 2025-26 school year already hit 550 students, a number that’s only expected to rise as July and August comes around and the district sees its late-summer boom.
“I don’t know where we’re going to put these kids, we’re already bursting at the seams,” he said.
The district is looking to build another new building, following the three it recently built, bringing it up to 16 school campuses.
The process is expected to take another three years. By the time they’re done, Uplinger will likely still be managing a growing population, with 40 million square feet of industrial development expected along the I-80 corridor in the next five years.
Many new residents are from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, New York, New Jersey, and other parts of Pennsylvania who are relocating for the new jobs at the largely logistical warehouses, being constructed.
With the rise in students coming into the district with little or no proficiency in English, Uplinger faced a shift in student needs and demand for academic services.
He rolled out the Newcomer Center in response, a K-6 program located in one school building that students attend to work on the English language skills for a short period of time, until they hit level two or three in their EL proficiency levels and return to their home school.
Some students are there for days, and some spend up to a year in the program, the maximum limit they allow. So far, about 220 have gone through the program.
“It’s been phenomenal,” he said. “It’s worked out really, really well.”
The Newcomer Center’s success spurred the district to expand it, he said, and it’s now in the process of starting one for 7th and 8th graders in separate buildings.
To accommodate the changes, the district also revamped its English language learner curriculum to be more immersive in English.
The district historically cycles through curriculum adoptions every five years. Last year the district adopted a new mathematics curriculum, this year’s focus is social studies, and next year it will work adopting new science materials.
“Curriculum is a living, breathing document,” he said, “that we have to consider and continue to look at all the time.”
has
The district’s $240 million budget, roughly, is in good shape, although he said, they are due for another $100 million on top of what they are being allocated by the state. Its $57 million in ESSER funds were spent on one-time expenses, which reduced the impact to its budget.
He’s not necessarily concerned about an overall reduction in its federal aid is prepared if that money is delivered under different conditions. If the aid comes in the form of a block grant — a possibility advocated by the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers — that may be “even better,” Uplinger said.
“We don’t have to worry about the hoops,” he said. “We can utilize the money the way we see fit.”
It expects about 20 new full-time staffers will be needed to support the program, as well as new curriculum materials.
“That is a big spend,” Sanko said.
The district has already earmarked funding as well — pending board approval — that would support the implementation of structured literacy in districts, as well as support teachers earning certifications in in-demand subject areas, like reading and special education.
More than 425 students in the district are English language learners as well — up from roughly 72 pre-pandemic — requiring the district to double the size of its English language department and divert funds from its general fund. Part of the increase in the last two years has been driven by a sharp rise in Ukrainian refugees. (The Greater Philadelphia region is home to a large population of refugees fleeing the war in that country.)
The district has also re-upped contracts to provide educators in the district with professional development to implement positive behavior support systems and multi-tiered systems of support for students, both of which are implemented across the district.
“We stay away from [cutting] anything that impacts what kids are getting. We want to make sure that those programs continue every year,” he said.
Enrollment declines force school closures elsewhere
While some districts are looking to build new schools to accommodate their growing enrollments, in Pittsburgh, Wayne Walters isn’t certain which of his schools he’ll have to close.
As superintendent of Pittsburgh Public Schools, Walters is tasked with managing the districts’ drop in enrollment, from nearly 20,500 in the 2020-2021 school year to 18,312 in the 2024-25 school year.
The contrast between the population boom in Hazleton and the contraction in Pittsburgh is reflective of nationwide trends in K-12 enrollment. Some school systems are seeing sharp influxes in students based on shifting local economic conditions, and others are managing drastic declines in population.
The enrollment drop has put stress on the Pittsburgh school system’s budget. Based on current projections, the district would not be able to make payroll in roughly two years if it continued with the same number of schools it currently operates, he said.
“School closures are often challenging for communities, but we have to do it,” he said.
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Like Philadelphia, the district relies on EdReports for guidance in choosing instructional resources, and recently also adopted Illustrative Mathematics’ resources for math curriculum and National GeographicNational Geographic for its science. The science resources are aligned with the new “Steel Standards” for science curriculum in the state, which are being implemented and assessed next year and are rooted in the Next Generation Science Standards.
District leaders are also focused on ensuring their science curriculum is in line with career needs in the greater Pittsburgh area, which has a substantial medical and educational services workforce.
In addition, the district is also still focused on addressing inequities, even if there is a larger push at the federal level to move away from diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
“When we look at our data, we see one group of students not performing well, and other groups performing better, Walters said. “We have to figure out why, and what we can do differently to allow success for all.”
His team in the district feels similarly about social-emotional learning, an area in which he’s seen an increased need for in the wake of the pandemic.
To manage the uncertainty posed by the Trump administration’s changes to K-12 policy, the district is planning to be “poised and prepared” for whatever changes may come.
“We’re still in this gray area with some things, but we continue pressing on because we want normalcy for our children,” he said. “We do not want education to seem pandemic-like, so we do our best to make sure that our service delivery is still robust.”