State Funding to Ensure Safe and Healthy School Facilities: Lessons for Pennsylvania

Long before closures due to the coronavirus pandemic, many Pennsylvania schools faced a different health crisis: unsafe facilities. Crumbling buildings, asbestos, lead, and other school facility health and safety risks plague many schools across Pennsylvania, particularly in low-income districts and those that enroll a high percentage of Black and Latinx students. The Commonwealth's failure to provide adequate facilities funding has created what Pennsylvania school administrators and school business officials have called a "growing disparity between those school districts that can address vital school construction, renovation or maintenance needs and those that cannot." This brief: (1) examines available evidence related to the condition of Pennsylvania's school facilities; (2) reviews past, current, and proposed policies related to how the state funds emergency facilities expenses; and (3) discusses how other states provide for emergency school facilities funding. Four findings are discussed in detail and recommendations are provided for how Pennsylvania can improve current funding policy to ensure safe and healthy school facilities and address disparities in district capacity to do so.