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Why should local residents be concerned about a state court ruling, concerning rural school districts in the central part of Pennsylvania?

Well, plenty as it turns out. Last November, the Education Law Center and the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia filed a lawsuit on behalf of seven parents, the Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools the NAACP and six school districts including William Penn School District, the Panther Valley School District, the School District of Lancaster, the Greater Johnstown School District, the Wilkes-Barre Area School District and the Shenandoah Valley School District.

The suit claimed that state officials had violated their constitutional duties to provide equal education opportunities for all children in Pennsylvania. They asked the court to order changes in the way education is funded in Pennsylvania, which mainly consists of raising revenue through property taxes. They contended that the system benefits affluent school districts, who have no problem raising enough revenue to educate their students. Low-income school districts, however, can’t raise enough money through property taxes to educate their students, they maintained.

While there were no direct connections with Fayette County in the lawsuit, it should have raised concerns among local education officials and taxpayers, as some of our school districts here are among the poorest in the state.

However, those concerns came to no avail as Commonwealth Court rejected the lawsuit earlier this week, contending that the funding of schools in the commonwealth is up to the Legislature not the courts.

Those who filed the lawsuit vow to carry on and appeal the ruling to the state Supreme Court. It’s hard to tell what the court will do, but back in 1999 it rejected a similar lawsuit from the City of Philadelphia.

So, it doesn’t look promising for those hoping the courts will rectify the long-standing problem of equal education funding for all students in Pennsylvania.

But fortunately for residents in low-income school districts across the state, they do have a supporter in Gov. Tom Wolf. He’s proposing a reduction in property taxes in exchange for increases in sales and income taxes. Republican leaders in the state Legislature are also in favor of the measure, but they want all the money from the increases in sales and income taxes going to property tax relief. Wolf wants at least some of that money targeted to help low-income school districts.

The push for helping low-income school districts took on a new emphasis recently with the publication of a story in The Washington Post. It reported Pennsylvania had the biggest discrepancy in the country between money spent on affluent and poor schools at 33 percent, almost double that of second-place Vermont at 18 percent.

“What it says very clearly is that we have, in many places, school systems that are separate and unequal,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan told The Washington Post.

“Money by itself is never the only answer, but giving kids who start out already behind in life, giving them less resources is unconscionable, and it’s far too common,” added Duncan.

We couldn’t agree more. We can only hope that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will order state officials to come up with a fairer way of funding education in the commonwealth.

And if that doesn’t happen, then perhaps Gov. Wolf will be able to persuade Republican lawmakers that all students in Pennsylvania deserve a good education, not just those who live in ritzy zip codes.

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