By Gabbie Burton
Contributing Writer

Chester County lawmakers, teachers and administrators gathered at Rainbow Elementary School in Coatesville on Thursday, Sept. 4 for a roundtable discussion on education funding with Children First, a child advocacy organization aiming to improve the lives of children throughout the area. 

A main focus of the discussion was on adequacy funding and the current state budget impasse stalling funding to school districts throughout Pennsylvania. Five districts in the county, Coatesville, Oxford, Avon Grove, Downingtown and Kennett, were deemed to be underfunded and are recipients of adequacy funding. These school districts received their first installments in 2024 totaling $9 million but are still in need $70 million to close the funding gap. 

To reach adequate funding, Kennett Consolidated School District needs $17 per student in additional funding, Downingtown Area School District requires $705, Avon Grove School District needs $3,061, Oxford Area School District needs $3,873 and Coatesville Area School District requires $4,068 per student.

“Just two years ago, in 2023, Pennsylvania's Highest Court declared that Pennsylvania's school funding system is unconstitutional and that more than half of our school districts in the state are underfunded,” said Priyanka Reyes-Kaura, Children First K-12 policy director. “Today's conversation is a dialogue that will allow state lawmakers to hear directly from superintendents, school board members, administrators and senior citizens. We’ll talk about how schools have used previous state investments and what are the biggest voting challenges that remain in this year.”

The roundtable featured five lawmakers, State Senators Carolyn Comitta and Katie Muth and State Representatives Paul Friel, Danielle Friel Otten and Chris Pielli, as well as 13 stakeholders representing Coatesville, Downingtown, West Chester, Avon Grove, Phoenixville, Great Valley and Tredyffrin-Easttown school districts. 

Comitta directed her first question to Coatesville, Avon Grove and Downingtown stakeholders asking, “What are the challenges your district is facing? What are some of the priorities you have for this school year, and how can more state funding help?”

Robert O’Donnell, superintendent of Downingtown School District, noted special education costs as a major challenge, as did Avon Grove superintendent, Scott DeShong. Additionally, DeShong mentioned support for English language learners. 

“In our district, as with the other districts in the southern part of the county, we continue to see an increase in the number of English language learners in our programs,” he said. “We've been dependent on state funding to increase the staffing in that area. We require some additional professional learning for our regular education teachers that work with students and integrate students into their classroom and bring them up to level quickly. So, in addition to what Downingtown shared with the special education piece, our English language learners are a significant challenge for us and the other districts in the southern part of the county.” 

Both O’Donnell and DeShong also commented on the burden to the taxpayers if there is not enough state funding to support these necessary programs in the districts. 

“Avon Grove is a pretty rural district,” DeShong said. “All of our tax base, 90 percent of our tax base comes from residential and farmland taxes, so we don’t have the benefit of a large commercial base. Anytime we increase taxes, it really goes on the burden of our homeowners.”

The topic of taxes and funding challenges led Coatesville Superintendent Anthony Rybarczyk to discuss the impact charter schools have on the district and their budget.

“For Coatesville, one of our biggest challenges is the charter schools,” he said. “When you're looking at $74 million of your budget go out the door to charter schools, when we have programs in our district that are, I will say, better than what they’re providing, we want our students to come back to us and give them an opportunity to grow and thrive. So we want to see how we can look at that funding formula for the charter schools and how it's impacting our district overall. I know there’s work that’s already being done for the cyber charter schools, but ours is the brick and mortar. That's where the bigger issue is.” 

The conversation on charter schools took up a significant portion of the roundtable with other districts including Avon Grove, Downingtown and West Chester providing input into issues of accountability with both in-person and cyber charter schools. O’Donnell shared that Downingtown had three students who transferred to cyber public schools before moving out of the district while still being charged for those students claiming residency in the district.

“Three students hadn’t been with us for three years, we were getting billed for that and if we don't pay them, it gets deducted, so we have to pay,” he said. “All three had IEPs as well so there’s $100,000 attached to three kids for the cyber school from the same family that didn’t even live in the district.”

Caryn Ghrayeb, a Downingtown school board member, commented that cyber charter schools should have the responsibility to verify that a student lives within the district they are charging in order to prevent misappropriated funds. 

“But do [the cyber charter schools] care as long as they are getting paid?” Muth asked.
A collective “no” was heard from around the table. 

After the discussion on charter schools, Reyes-Kaura shifted gears to talk about improvements the school districts have been able to make with additional funding from the state. Coatesville Area School District was able to re-open five elementary school libraries, hire additional librarians and support social workers in the district. DeShong shared that Avon Grove focused funding toward getting students to stay in school and hired an additional teacher for English language learners and ultimately increased graduation rates by 30 percent for English language learners. 

While the many difficulties and concerns voiced by the district officials are certainly heavy to bear, the discussion ended on an assurance from the lawmakers to continue supporting the school districts. There were words of hope and encouragement from around the table. 

“I speak for [board members] in Chester County, perhaps across the state, we do not choose to serve because of our own district,” said Bill Wood, an Avon Grove School Board member and Chester County Schools Boards Legislative Council chair. “We choose to serve because we believe in the promise of public education to provide a quality education for all students, and that requires fair funding,”