When Gov. Josh Shapiro signed a budget bill last month, most Pennsylvania residents assumed that the budget impasse was resolved and that much-need education funds would be quickly sent out to school districts, especially with the school year about to begin.
However, some critical education dollars — $100 million in Level Up funding, which supports the 100 most underfunded districts across Pennsylvania — have still not been released, and state Senate leaders excluded the necessary enabling language to release Level Up funds from code bills they recently passed and sent to the state House.
As I testified last month to the state House Education Committee, I have been a part of the School District of Lancaster, a Level Up district, for more than 20 years, but I live just 5 miles away in Manheim Township, where my son is a ninth grader. The disparities in education funding across these two districts have opened my eyes to the need for Level Up, which seeks to level the playing field between underfunded and affluent districts.
Manheim Township is a wealthy community with a new $62 million middle school equipped with a black box theater, classroom smart boards and an audio-video room with tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment. Everything about my son’s educational environment and experience signals to him, “You matter. Your future matters. Your dreams matter. Your education is important and worth investing in.”
In my district, we have to budget and save for every repair. There are buildings without air conditioning, and it will take years to renovate them. Overcrowded schools use trailers to hold classes for their multilingual learners.
When I started my career, my classroom was a maintenance closet, and even today, two of my English language development colleagues teach in the library and the other two of us share a classroom because space is so limited.
These inequities would seem unfair even if our districts were serving similar populations. However, in my district, we serve a much higher percentage of students living in poverty, students with disabilities and English language learners. This is not coincidental: Level Up districts are only 20% of all Pennsylvania districts but serve over half of the state’s economically disadvantaged students and English language learners. The students with the greatest needs are disproportionately concentrated in Level Up districts with the fewest resources relative to student need.
I work with multilingual learners, and the research is very clear that my students can be successful, but they require additional resources to help them succeed. If you have learned a second language, you know this.
Without enough staff to provide support, my students, who are smart and eager to learn, will not be able to access the curriculum to learn the other critical academic skills they need to succeed.
Approximately 1 in 5 of our School District of Lancaster students speaks a language other than English — a far higher percentage than other districts in Lancaster County. Our district spends $11.5 million annually on our programs for English language learners, more than the entire basic education subsidy for most county school districts.
Underfunding is also a huge factor in Pennsylvania’s teacher shortage: Research makes clear that poor and underfunded districts are the ones experiencing the greatest shortages, the highest percentages of emergency-certified and underprepared teachers, and the highest teacher attrition rates.
The students and staff of the School District of Lancaster are capable, but they need resources — time, money and personnel — to be successful. We deserve a level playing field to compete, and that’s all we’re asking for.
Level Up has been an important step toward equity over the past two years, finally acknowledging the needs of the commonwealth’s 100 most underfunded districts and the reality that we will never reach adequacy with incremental annual increases to basic education funding alone. Critically, support for Level Up has been bipartisan, partly because there are Level Up districts all over Pennsylvania, not only in Democratic urban areas but also in suburban and rural communities across the commonwealth. In Lancaster County, Columbia Borough and Ephrata Area are also Level Up school districts.
It breaks my heart that $100 million of Level Up funding that was already appropriated and approved with bipartisan support in both chambers of the state Legislature is now in jeopardy. I call on leaders and members in the Pennsylvania House and Senate to stop playing politics with my students’ futures and release the Level Up funds to create a level playing field for all students in Pennsylvania. Please send my students the same message my son receives: “You matter. Your future matters. Your dreams matter. Your education is important and worth investing in.”
Kristen Haase teaches English language development to the multilingual learners of Carter & MacRae Elementary School in the School District of Lancaster. She is a 2022-23 Teach Plus Pennsylvania senior policy fellow.
