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<p>It&#8217;s been four years in the making and at least two more years to go, but a lawsuit contending the state shortchanges public education funding &#8212; with Wilkes-Barre Area School District and resident Tracey Hughes among those listed as petitioners &#8212; now has a trial schedule.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s nice to have actual dates lawyers can plan around,&#8221; attorney Michael Churchill said after Commonwealth Court Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer issued the scheduling order Thursday. &#8220;The school districts will finally get a chance to tell why state funding is not what it needs to be.&#8221;</p><p>Churchill works with the Public Interest Law Center, which teamed with the Education Law Center to file the suit in 2014 on behalf of several parents, including area resident Hughes and six school districts, including Wilkes-Barre Area.</p><p>Known as William Penn School District et. al. v. Pa. Department of Education et. al., the suit argues the state Legislature is failing to meet a constitutional obligation to provide &#8220;a thorough and efficient system of public education.&#8221;</p><p>Two previous suits filed in 1999 were dismissed as &#8220;not judicially manageable,&#8221; meaning it was an issue for the legislature, not the courts, because there were no clear state requirements for schools to meet and thus no way for courts to decide if they were being met. This suit succeeded to get to trial, in part, because the state had set specific goals measured through standardized tests under the 2001 federal &#8220;No Child Left Behind&#8221; law, and the state had conducted a &#8220;costing out&#8221; study to determine how much each district needs to reach those goals.</p><p>&#8220;We think it&#8217;s relatively simple,&#8221; Churchill said &#8220;We can put on evidence of what districts get and how unequal it is.&#8221;</p><p>Judge Jubelirer seemed to agree to the &#8220;relatively simple&#8221; part, giving a fairly short amount of time for &#8220;fact discovery,&#8221; to be completed by Oct. 4, 2019. Churchill said the defendants had asked for a year-and-a-half for discovery, but those backing the suit contend most of the pertinent facts &#8212; things like district budgets, per-pupil spending, and state share of funding in each district &#8212; have long been a matter of public record, so they argued for less time to that first pre-trial landmark.</p><p>Primary expert reports are to be served by Nov. 4, 2019, and rebuttal expert reports by Dec. 4 the same year. The judge called for motions for summary judgment &#8212; a legal request sure to be filed, Churchill said &#8212; and supporting briefs to be done by Feb. 4, 2020.</p><p>The trial itself, before one judge with no jury, is expected to begin in the summer of 2020.</p><p>One new factor that developed after the suit was filed is the state&#8217;s &#8220;fair funding formula&#8221; intended to make sure state education money is doled out according to need, with the poorest districts getting a larger share. It was passed in 2016, but has been used for only &#8220;new money&#8221; added to the education budget. Churchill noted that means only about 2 percent of state money goes through the new formula.</p><p>&#8220;The important thing is that this trial is going to make clear how needy these districts are, how unfairly resources are distributed, and how much more help from the state is necessary,&#8221; he said.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Hughes </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/web1_TTL060915WBA1-1.jpg</photo0><caption0>Hughes </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Mark Guydish</p><p>mguydish@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Mark Guydish at 570-991-6112 or on Twitter @TLMarkGuydish</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Education-funding lawsuit with local participants finally gets trial schedule