The article “School districts plan summer learning, fearing learning loss from time outside classroom” (May 5, TribLIVE) highlighted the huge toll that school closures have on students’ learning and well-being. For many students of color and students living in poverty, public schools may be the only place they can turn to for meals, physical and mental health care, and social supports.
While our schools try to rise to the challenge, the pandemic illustrates again how students with the highest needs are too often shortchanged by Pennsylvania’s unfair school funding system. These are injustices that our organization, the Education Law Center, has been highlighting and challenging for years — as has the statewide PA Schools Work coalition.
Getting students through this crisis is going to be a struggle, but we cannot neglect to address the underlying inequities. Structural racism is baked into our employment, health, housing and education systems, denying equal opportunities. Addressing these challenges will take a true movement, where schools and communities come together. It will require that public education be fully and equitably funded.
The emergency school aid committed to date is far less than what’s needed to address the costs of the pandemic and replace plunging tax revenues. Let’s remind state and federal leaders to invest in this vital public good now so students emerge from this crisis attending schools that are more just.
Cheryl Kleiman
South Side
The writer is staff attorney for the Pittsburgh-based Education Law Center.