WHAT: Governor Shapiro’s 2025-26 Budget Proposal: Not Adding Up on Education. 412 Justice/ERN OPEN LETTER OF RESPONSE.
WHEN: Week of February 4th 2025
WHERE: (Impact on Pittsburgh Public Schools)
WHO: Written by 412 JUSTICE & EDUCATION RIGHTS NETWORK.
PRESS CONTACT: Suzanne South, south@412justice.org.
Basic Education and Special Education Funding Investments are Inadequate to Keep Pace with Inflation and the Cyber Charter Tuition Reimbursement is Eliminated
On February 4, 2025, Governor Shapiro announced his proposed 2025-26 PA Budget. We applaud the proposal that makes investments in public schools, and has no plan to divert public money to pay for private education through vouchers. The proposal takes an important step in closing the adequacy gap that must be filled to reach constitutional compliance with a $494 million investment in adequacy funding. However, 70% of Pennsylvania public school students are living in districts with adequacy gaps and the proposal has no timeline for filling the gap so students in these districts can get the resources they need.
What does this mean for our schools?
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Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) and 23 other school districts across Allegheny County that do not receive adequacy funding, the proposed investments of $75 million in Basic Education Funding (BEF) and $40 million in Special Education Funding (SEF) is a disinvestment in public education because it falls short of keeping pace with inflation (~3%).
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This disinvestment will put pressure on school districts to cut critical programs and services, reduce staff, raise local property taxes, and close schools.
The proposed 2025-26 PA budget is bad for PPS:
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$674,246 (.4%) BEF (Basic Education Funding) increase (down from 1.38% last year)
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$171,688 (.6%) SEF (Special Education Funding) increase (down from 1.48% last year)
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The elimination of the Cyber Charter Reimbursement (-$3,755,952) results in $2.8 million less funding for PPS this year
The proposed PA budget calls for eliminating the cyber charter reimbursement in last year’s budget. Instead, the proposed PA budget relies on savings from cyber charter school tuition reforms to replace last year’s cyber charter reimbursement. This is worth as much as Monopoly Money and puts the urgent burden on our legislators to enact long-awaited legislation for cyber charter funding reform.
The discontinuation of the Cyber Charter Reimbursement is bad for PPS:
In 2024, PPS was reimbursed $3.7 million for cyber charter school tuition. This disinvestment will leave a hole in the PPS 2025 Budget, authorized in December 2024, that includes the continuation of the $3.7 million cyber charter reimbursement.
The proposed cyber charter tuition savings of $12,496,103 for PPS is unrealistic and should NOT be counted on as it requires the General Assembly to pass cyber charter school funding reforms to cap cyber charter tuition at $8K per student.
We call on Governor Shapiro and the General Assembly to pass a final budget that invests in all public school students in the Commonwealth to meet their basic needs.
