Between “committee hearings and casting floor votes on pending legislation, a select group of party leaders will also negotiate a state budget with Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro for the fiscal year 2024-25, trying to strike a deal before the June 30 deadline,” LNP/LancasterOnline’s reported.

Lancaster County Republican state Sen. Scott Martin, Appropriations Committee chairman, said he’ll continue to fight for the private-school tuition voucher program that sparked a more than five-month budget delay last year: the Pennsylvania Award for Student Success program. That bill received some bipartisan support last month in the state Senate Education Committee.

But this is where we sharply depart from Martin. Students in the commonwealth’s low-wealth school districts, which include the School District of Lancaster and Panther Valley, cannot wait any longer for politicians in Harrisburg to ensure they get the education they were promised by the state constitution.

We strongly support Shapiro’s proposal for a more than $1.1 billion increase in basic education funding. That increase is actually just a down payment toward meeting the state’s obligation as outlined in a February 2023 ruling in a landmark school fair funding lawsuit.

Commonwealth Court Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer - who ran for the bench as a Republican - ruled then that “the current system of funding public education has disproportionately, negatively impacted students who attend schools in low-wealth school districts. ... As a result, students in low-wealth districts do not have access to the educational resources needed to prepare them to succeed academically, socially, or civically.”

To this point, we were heartened to see the state House passage last week of House Bill 2370. The bill, which all House Democrats and five Republicans voted in favor of, “sets up the state to increase state funding of public schools by $864 million in the next academic year, and a broader proposal calls for more than $5 billion over seven years,” The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Gillian McGoldrick and Maddie Hanna reported. “Public school advocates say the changes are conservative but would be transformative.”

“Transformative” is urgently needed - for both students and local taxpayers. Full passage of HB 2370, which also includes crucial cybercharter school reform, must be part of the final budget deal.

Students in low-wealth districts have been shunted to the back of the line for years as lawmakers and governors have set other spending priorities. Property tax reform that might actually ease the burden on homeowners in low-wealth school districts, and shift some of that burden to the state, remains a unicorn in Harrisburg: long-wished-for, but never materializing.

As the June 30 budget deadline approaches, we’re likely to hear much blather about how private-school tuition vouchers would save children in low-wealth school districts by enabling them to attend supposedly better schools. Less attention will be given to the students who will be left behind in those districts. And even less attention will be directed toward transparency and accountability measures for vouchers, if they are approved.

Private schools can pick and choose their students; public schools cannot - they must teach economically disadvantaged students, English language learners and students with disabilities. That requires funding that can’t be raised in districts that abound with low-income households and tax-exempt properties such as government buildings.

Instead of using taxpayer resources on private-school tuition voucher programs and catering to school-choice lobbyists, it’s time for lawmakers to meet their constitutional obligation to provide a “thorough and efficient system of public education” that serves all students.

“What we’re doing is what the court has told us to do, to give every child in this commonwealth an equitable and fair public education,” Democratic state House Majority Leader Matt Bradford said last week during passage of HB 2370, according to The Associated Press. “This isn’t politics, this is a constitutional requirement, one that this body has failed for too long.”

He is correct on all counts.

Adequate funding for all public school districts is the key to preparing the next generation of Pennsylvanians for citizenship, prosperity in the workplace and leadership of an increasingly challenging world.

LNP/Lancaster Online