2026-2027 Governor’s Budget Proposal Update

Susan Spicka

Executive Director

Education Voters of PA

Our Mission

Our mission is to ensure elected officials adopt and implement a pro-public education agenda. To that end, we advocate for sound education policy and build and mobilize the public will to ensure that support for quality public education and an opportunity to learn for all children is a top priority for key decision makers.

Our Work

• Ed Voters is Pennsylvania’s only statewide public education policy and advocacy organization.
• We educate individuals, organizations, and our statewide network about issues impacting public education.
• We train advocates through Zoom and in-person meetings and create opportunities for advocates to engage decision makers.
• We create fact sheets and write research briefs to support advocacy efforts.

Overview

1. Share the landscape of the budget.

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• Share what we know about Governor Shapiro’s proposed budget.

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• Discuss advocacy activity.

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• Make plans to build support for the funding students need!

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Governor Shapiro’s Budget Proposal Demonstrates His Strong Commitment to Public Education

Why adequate funding for ALL school districts matters

Teachers and Counselors

Computers and STEM Labs

School Nurses and Librarians

Remedial Help for Struggling Learners

The Landscape - Adequacy and Tax Equity

Commonwealth Court declared PA’s school funding system unconstitutional on February 7, 2023. The judge ordered respondents to come up with a plan.

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Adequacy Targets

Act 55 of 2024 put into law an adequacy target for each school district – a measure of what level of total funding each district needs to ensure students have the resources necessary to succeed.

This includes the state’s share of funding and the local share some districts would need to cover because they have capacity in their tax base to pay more.

The Landscape - Adequacy (con’t)

• The total adequacy gap identified was $4.8 billion, with $300 million was designated as local share.
• Roughly 70% of school districts (348 of 500) had adequacy gaps.
• The 2024-2025 state budget provided $494 million in adequacy supplements to districts, or about 11% of the total.

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The Landscape - Adequacy (con’t)

• The adequacy formula was tweaked in the 2025-2026 school code to remove the local share calculation, creating a $4.8 billion gap that is the state share.
• With the changes, 363 of 500 have adequacy gaps.
• The 2025-2026 state budget provided $526 million in adequacy supplements to districts, or about 11% of the total.
• The 2025-2026 budget also provided $50,000 to districts without adequacy gaps, totalling $6.4 million.
• There is no timeline in the law for filling the remaining $3.3 billion gap,

but this investment represents a second installment of funding for a

nine-year timeline.

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PA Schools Work adequacy explainer.

The Landscape - Tax Equity

• Funding for the 50 school districts with the highest tax burdens in the commonwealth.
• Act 55 of 2024 calculated a $258 million total tax equity gap, which is the amount needed to offset the local revenue generated by these districts from taxing above the 90th percentile rate.
• The 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 state budget provided $64 million in tax equity supplements to districts, or about 22% of the total.

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PA Schools Work tax equity explainer.

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• $526.4 million increase for districts with an adequacy gap
• $6.4 million in additional supplements to provide a $50,000 minimum allocation for districts without an adequacy gap.
• This would maintain a nine-year timeline for filling the gap.

Ready to Learn Funding = Adequacy + Tax Equity

Governor Shapiro’s 2026-2027 Budget Proposal

Tax Equity Supplement

• Proposed increase: $32.2 million, equal to the amount invested in FY 2024-2025 and 2025-2026.
• This would maintain an eight-year timeline.

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Adequacy Supplement

Special Education Funding

• Proposed increase - $50 million (3.3%)
• Will not allow districts to keep pace with inflation.

Basic Education Funding increase for all 500 school districts

• Proposed increase - $50 million (0.6%)
• Will not allow districts to keep pace with inflation.

Governor Shapiro’s 2026-2027 Budget Proposal

Cyber Charter Funding Reform to save $75 million

Incorporates an “excess spending factor” into the tuition rate calculation.

• In the basic education funding formula, the excess spending factor compares a school district’s current expenditures to the statewide median. If you are above the median (higher spenders), you have an excess expenditure factor below one.

• For cyber charter school tuition rate calculations, multiplying a school district’s selected expenditures by its excess spending factor (maximum value of 1) effectively caps each school district’s cyber charter nonspecial

tuition rate at the 50th percentile.

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Governor Shapiro’s 2026-2027 Budget Proposal

Cyber Charter Funding Reform to save $75 million (con’t)

Expands the permitted deductions

• Last year’s budget added three new deductions for spending categories that don’t make sense to include:
• Tax assessment and collection services, 60% of student activities, and 60% of operations and maintenance of plant services (facilities)
• This proposal increases the 60% amounts to 80% so school districts can write off more of those expenditures.

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These reforms build on reforms from 2025-2026 state budget that

save districts approximately $178 million annually to $253 million total.

Career and Technical Education

$14.3 million or 10% increase for the Career and Technical Education appropriation, which has multiple components:

• $4.3 million is the estimated amount needed to maintain the CTE subsidy
• $10 million to support high-quality STEM and computer science

Physical Security and Mental Health

Proposed flat funding of $100 million which is awarded

through a grant program.

Governor Shapiro’s 2026-2027 Budget Proposal

Early Childhood Education

• $7.5 million or 2.3% increase to Pre-K Counts and $2 million or 2.3% to Head Start to help providers raise wages and stabilize the early educator workforce.
• $51.2 million or 11.3% increase ($504.5 million total) for Early Intervention for 3-5 year olds.

Governor Shapiro’s 2026-2027 Budget Proposal

School Food Services

$7.1 million (9.3%) increase for school food services.

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Pupil Transportation

• $1.2 million (0.16%) increase for pupil transportation

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School employees’ social security

• $7.5 million (1.1%) increase to cover the state’s portion of social security payments for employees

Governor Shapiro’s 2026-2027 Budget Proposal

Proposed continuation of $125 million for the Public School Facility Grant Program with a recommendation that $25 million be spent on solar for schools.

These competitive grants are administered by the Commonwealth Financing Authority (CFA) and support a broad range of projects such as roof or window repairs, HVAC needs, and plumbing systems.

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School Facilities

Governor Shapiro’s 2026-2027 Budget Proposal

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The Public School Facility Grant Program is not continued in the governor’s out budget for future years.

The governor is proposing the Pennsylvania Program for Critical Infrastructure Investment, which would use bond proceeds to invest billions into infrastructure projects across the commonwealth, including school districts and local governments.

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School Facilities (con’t)

Governor Shapiro’s 2026-2027 Budget Proposal

Student Teacher Stipend Program

• $5 million increase for student teacher stipends for a total of $35 million in available grant funding in 2026/27.
• Fully funding the program will cost an estimated $50 million.

Teacher Supports

Teacher Professional Development

• $2.5 million increase for teacher professional development programs for a total of $7.5 million in available

funding in 2026/27.

Governor Shapiro’s 2026-2027 Budget Proposal

State-related (Penn State, Pitt, Temple)

• These have been flat funded since 2018-2019.
• The 2025-2026 budget package established the State-related University Performance Fund.
• The Shapiro budget proposes a $30 million transfer to this fund.
• Money in the fund would be distributed to state-related institutions utilizing performance-based metrics that include 4-year graduation rate, 6-year graduation rate, 6-year graduation rate of

Pell-grant recipients, and the high-demand degree rate.

• 5% increase for Lincoln University.

Higher Education

Governor Shapiro’s 2026-2027 Budget Proposal

Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) aka state-owned

• Flat funded
• Due to flat funding in the 2025-2026 state budget, the PASSHE Board of Governors approved a 3.6% tuition increase.

Higher Education

PA Community Colleges

• Flat funded

Governor Shapiro’s 2026-2027 Budget Proposal

• PA ranks 47th in the nation for state appropriations based on full-time equivalent enrollment (FTE).
• When the state does not invest its share of funding to support higher education, the costs are loaded onto the shoulders of families.
• $67.4 billion in student loan debt belongs to Pennsylvania state residents.
• $36,120 is the average student loan debt for Pennsylvanians.
• Stay tuned for information about the

PA Promise proposal!

PA’s higher education affordability crisis

Takeaways

• Most money is directed to school districts that have the greatest need through the adequacy investment.
• It will take nine years of investments at this level to fill the adequacy gap at this rate.
• Basic and special education increases are not enough to allow districts to keep up with inflation. Some districts will fall behind, adequacy districts will need to to use adequacy funding to pay for inflationary increases instead of new investments.
• Cyber charter reforms continue to cut wasteful spending and create efficiencies to lower the overall cost to taxpayers.

A prolonged budget standoff is unacceptable

• Another prolonged budget standoff would mean millions of dollars wasted in lost interest for districts and/or expensive bank fees for loans that districts would need to take out to cover their payroll and expenses.
• A standoff and the uncertainty of funding would undercut districts that are working to responsibly invest adequacy dollars that they are owed by the state to provide students the resources they are owed by the state.

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How does this budget proposal impact your district?

Click HERE for the PA House Approps spreadsheet.

What’s Next?

House Appropriations

March 3 at, 2026 1:00 pm

Senate Appropriations

February 23, 2026 at 9:30 am

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Budget hearings - Click Here

The Work Ahead: Advocacy Opportunities

Share the fact sheet on social media to raise awareness in your community of how much funding the state owes your local school district.

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Click HERE for adequacy factsheets.

Sample Post:

The newly proposed PA budget includes a third year of Adequacy Funding! This is funding meant for students, classrooms, and the resources our schools rely on every day.

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In (insert district) School District, that means $(insert adequacy amount) in additional support for our local public schools.

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This fact sheet breaks down what that investment looks like for our district.

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Take a look and feel free to share so others can see what this means for (insert district).

The Work Ahead: Advocacy Opportunities

• Print fact sheet that show your district’s adequacy gap, bring copies to a school board meeting, make a public comment in support of state lawmakers supporting the full proposed package of funding for K-12 schools. and bring copies for your school board members,
• Write a letter to the editor in your local paper in support of Gov. Shapiro’s K-12 funding proposal.
• Schedule a meeting with your state lawmakers.
• Host a postcard party!

The Work Ahead: Save the Date for Advocacy Day!

Save the date for the PA Schools Work Advocacy Day on Wednesday, May 6th.

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Legislative meetings all day

Rally at 1:00 pm on the front Capitol steps

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Click HERE to let us know you will be attending and let us know if you would like us to set up meetings for you with your lawmakers.

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The Work Ahead: Help Build the Movement

Build the movement for adequate, equitable and constitutional public school funding in Pennsylvania!

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Ask your network to sign up to join Ed Voters so that they can be part of our network and receive information and updates about what is happening with the education funding in Harrisburg.

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If you’re interested in hosting a house party or further engaging your network, let us know!

Stay Tuned!

Additional advocacy resources are on the way:

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Fact sheets for each school district with data that shows how the budget proposal will impact your district: Mid March

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Additional materials with talking points and information: Ongoing

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Email updates with actions you can take to help; Ongoing

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Thank you!

Questions?

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SSpicka@educationvoterspa.org

From Advocacy Day 2024

The Work Ahead: Make a Quick Call

Lawmakers need to understand that their constituents support Governor Shapiro’s budget proposal.

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Contact your state lawmakers and ask them to support Gov. Shapiro’s proposed K-12 budget.

• Visit Find Your Legislator PA to get their contact information
• Put their Harrisburg office phone numbers in your phone
• Call their office with a short message.

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Send a quick text to Gov. Shapiro thanking him for his strong support of public education in the budget proposal. 717-788-8990.