Editor:
It was prudent for your Feb. 13 editorial (“School funding court ruling is historic win”) to express caution and patience with regard to seeing results any time soon when it comes to school funding in Pennsylvania. The fact that a court has declared Pennsylvania’s system for funding schools unconstitutional is a step in the right direction. However, the school funding system in Ohio was declared unconstitutional in 1997, and not much has changed there as a result of that decision. I lived there for 13 years through 2019 and witnessed the lack of meaningful action.
Considering the glacial speed at which Pennsylvania’s Legislature usually operates, we can likely look forward to a prolonged period of fits and starts before all school systems receive adequate and approximately equal funding per student.
Reliance on local property taxes as the primary source of revenue for schools results in huge disparities among districts, as is painfully obvious in Berks County and throughout Pennsylvania. Here’s hoping that Pennsylvania has better and faster results than our neighbors to the west.
Robert Brems
Wyomissing
Source: Berkshire mont