Over 60 years have passed since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Brown v. Board of Education that having separate schools for black and white students is inherently unequal. School integration, as a strategy to access equal educational resources, was limited in what it could achieve. Although school integration reached its peak in the 1970s, it has been in decline since, largely due to another court ruling which released districts from court oversight if they had achieved integration.
With districts no longer under court order to integrate, todays levels of school segregation have returned to those of the 1960s. In 2016, Pennsylvania enacted a fair funding formula that takes student need into account when considering how much districts should get. The problem is that this only applies to new money — increases to the state budget. As a result, less than 10% of the state’s basic education budget goes through the fair funding formula. That means more than 90% of state funding is distributed inequitably.
On Aug. 16th, the Hershey Indivisible Team is honored to host PA Representative Chris Rabb who will share details of legislation he has introduced to correct the unfair distribution of school funding.