On the front lawn of King elementary school on Thursday, December 5, School District of Lancaster Superintendent Dr. Damaris Rau gathered a group of supporters around her in the blistering cold. “This is not about Dr. Rau,” she said. “This is about other people who care about this situation…The quality of a child’s education in this state is too often determined by their zip code, and this is simply not fair.”

Politicians and members of the community were gathered at King Elementary for a press conference on charter school reform hosted by the School District of Lancaster. 

Dr. Rau pointed out that because 90% of the students in the School District of Lancaster are economically disadvantaged, and most of the school funding comes from taxpayers, it is impossible for the Lancaster school system to compare with wealthier, suburban districts. In fact, only 33% of the school district funding is provided by the state of Pennsylvania. 

Lancaster Mayor Danene Sorace also spoke at the conference, invoking the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.”

Mayor Sorace also discussed her challenges as the mother of a middle schooler in the School District of Lancaster. In her daughter’s kindergarten class, she said, many students had to wear dirty uniforms each day to school, and there was a shortage of before and after school programs. There were no teacher’s assistants or teacher’s aides for a 28-student class. Lots of children’s parents couldn’t attend the winter concert, and the school had to have fundraisers for enrichment activities and field trips. “Why?” Mayor Sorace asked the crowd: “One word – poverty.” Lancaster students face more challenges than our wealthy neighbors do, argued Sorace, and all because of their zip code. 

10-year King Elementary School teacher Amanda Aikens added that ¼ of charter school teachers are allowed to be uncertified, and that 7 out of the 13 full-time cyber charter schools in Pennsylvania are the lowest performing schools in the state. Aikens also argued that funding for special ed students in charter schools has led to an overidentification of such students in order to get more money for the schools. 

State Representative Mike Sturla (D – Lancaster) was the first speaker to bring up the Basic Education Funding Formula, also known as the Fair Funding Formula: a system created in 2015 by the Basic Education Funding Commission to determine the percentage that each school district receives out of state funds. The Fair Funding Formula gives the same amount of money to each district per student, and students are weighted and divided in the formula based on factors such as median household income, poverty rate, and number of English language learners. 

According to this formula, all of the school districts in Pennsylvania, including the School District of Lancaster, are seriously underfunded. The School District of Lancaster receives almost 72% of the revenue declared to it through the Fair Funding Formula, which means that there are nearly 25 Million dollars that the district does not receive each year. In 2011, Pennsylvania schools lost one billion dollars from the State and Federal government. This money was used as a reimbursement to charter schools. 

“We can do better, we should do better – by equitably funding urban schools,” chanted Dr. Rau, to echoed assent from the crowd. She cited the 1955 Alabama bus boycott, where people took a stand against segregation. “We have effectively created a segregated school system,” she added. In a school district where there are over 1,000 homeless students and a 90% poverty rate, it is vital that schools be given enough money to support and facilitate learning.