Landmark Pa. school funding case decided: The state's system is unconstitutional

[BumRushDaShow]

7. There have been groups out there working on this for years

similar to how the orgs had popped up to promote and ensure "fair redistricting".

One group I found is "Pennsylvanians for Fair Funding" - https://pafairfunding.org/

They have a good FAQ answer video presentation to respond to what is probably one of the most used "excuses" -

One of the problems when this comes up, is that there are different categories of things that need to be addressed within school districts and each thing contributes to success or failure. But what happens is that it all gets lumped into one pot, whereas different funding sources should be identified to cover different influencers that can bring about educational improvements as well as an overall enhancement of a community's quality of life.

When it comes to subjects like "community health disparities" and "gun violence" - none of that is "school funding" issue per se but is something that other entities can handle by providing their own resources and services.

But what IS a damn "school funding" issue is this obscene statistic -

7 stand-alone libraries in 214 Philly public schools; advocates aim to change that

By Racquel Williams, KYW Newsradio
KYW Newsradio
March 2, 2022 10:13 pm

PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The hit TV show "Abbott Elementary" may have put Philadelphia in the spotlight, but a group of school library advocates says all that glitters is not gold. Those advocates are once again calling for libraries and librarians in all city public schools.

Studies have shown that children who have access to fully functional libraries perform better academically than those who don’t. According to the group Save School Librarians, there are only seven stand-alone libraries of the 214 public schools in the city, and there are suspected to be just four librarians in the entire district.

“In elementary school, you’re getting kids excited about books and you’re introducing them to authors and you’re starting to get them to do research, but then in middle and high school it’s heavy on research," said retired librarian Deborah Grill with the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools.

She says this is one area where the children are losing, and getting children excited about a life-long journey of reading can be difficult when they don't have access. “Pennsylvania requires prisons to have libraries. It requires barber schools to have libraries, requires technical sites to have libraries, but it doesn’t require libraries in public schools. It requires private schools to have libraries," Grill said.

(snip)

https://www.audacy.com/kywnewsradio/news/local/philadelphia-public-school-library-paid-librarians

Who would believe this is the state of affairs in 2023? But it's TRUE.

A topical and seminal opinion piece published last summer in Education Week, summarized what is a set of dual issues quite well -

Education Funding Opinion
Book Bans? My School Doesn’t Even Have a Library

How underfunding is its own form of censorship

By Lydia Kulina-Washburn — July 26, 2022 4 min read



Though so-called book-banning legislation was recently introduced in Pennsylvania, I doubt it will affect my practice at an underresourced public school in the West Philadelphia neighborhood. The provision aims to inform parents of suggestive material in curricula and libraries. The bill follows other attempts throughout the country to limit student access to books with controversial thematic matter. However, many underresourced schools do not have school libraries or many of the materials to fill them that could be examined for explicit content.

At face value, the national debates over book banning may appear to be a tension between the right and left. However, a closer look at the conflict reveals the inequity that has long defined the educational landscape. Politicians, families, and policymakers who argue the finer points of book selection in schools are ignoring the low-income schools in their states that don’t have adequate literary resources.

I have never worked in a school with a functional school library, much less a controversial one. Those rooms instead functioned as overflow space for detentions and overheated classrooms. Oaken shelves sat empty except for a few dusty jackets, highlighting SAT tips from 16 years prior or offering workforce tips that predated the iPhone. None of them had graphic novels, anime archives, or contemporary young-adult literature that might grab students’ interest.

Those “libraries” were missing all the controversial titles that are being contested in capitol halls across the country. In fact, many often-contested books are not taught in underresourced classrooms not because of ideology but rather because of resource availability. Fearful of the blizzard of asbestos from a damaged ceiling, I didn’t dare touch decades-old resources in the book room of the high school in the North Philadelphia neighborhood where I taught several years ago. Down the street, in my next position, I had an allergic reaction to the book lice infesting the classics. (Apparently, the copies of Of Mice and Men had seen more than furry rodents.)

(snip)

https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/opinion-book-bans-my-school-doesnt-even-have-a-library/2022/07

I won't even get into the issue of the lack school nurses (that was a problem BEFORE the pandemic), let alone a lack of school guidance counselors.

The current disparities were magnified by the very real de facto and de jure red-lining that went on for well over a century or more, imposing forced segregation and pulling resources out of both highly rural and highly urbanized areas, and transferring them elsewhere once the concept of a "suburb" became entrenched in the middle of the last century. Since then, the practice has been reinforced year after year after year. Decade after decade after decade.