Five years after Pennsylvania passed a new school funding formula, one touted as a major step toward equity, Spotlight PA finds little has changed. 

Part of the problem: Only a fraction of state education funding actually goes through the formula. Another issue is a policy known as "hold harmless."

It's a guarantee that means shrinking districts have seen their subsidy shares continue to grow, while expanding districts — many that serve Black, Hispanic, or Latinx students — have not seen proportionate boosts.

Gov. Tom Wolf has announced a plan to fix that, one endorsed by public education advocates but deemed "dead on arrival" by Republican legislators.  

THE CONTEXT: Wolf's proposed billion-dollar solution is meant to help growing schools in urban centers with higher costs while also protecting shrinking rural districts.

But it would be bankrolled by a hefty tax increase on high earners — a nearly impossible sell to lawmakers who believe school taxes are too high already.

“A large part of the problems that districts face are quite frankly from bad decisions being made somewhere along the line, not necessarily amongst those today, but it could have been bad decisions 20 years ago,” said Rep. Curt Sonney (R., Erie), chair of the House Education Committee.

Meanwhile, Donna Cooper, executive director of Public Citizens For Children and Youth, said growing districts are “just waiting for their shot because we keep pouring money into these other districts.”

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POLICE POLL: A poll of 1,300 Philadelphians — most of them white — found 90% in favor of shifting some police funding to social, health, and housing programs. Three-quarters said police were "bad" or "very bad" at preventing violence in their neighborhoods, and a majority said police were not helpful when called, WHYY reports. In City Hall, police spending is likely to be a focal point this budget season, with sustained calls for cuts and the city facing a $450 million, coronavirus-fueled shortfall, per The Inquirer

UNEQUAL: Residents of low-income, racially segregated neighborhoods are more likely to die from the coronavirus, a Duquesne University study has found. The nationwide research cites a direct correlation between the size of a county's "disadvantaged" population and its number of COVID-19 deaths, according to the Post-Gazette. And while Black and Latino Pennsylvanians continue to be overrepresented in COVID-19 cases, PublicSource reports they've also been underrepresented in the vaccine rollout. 

CHARGES: Unsealed grand jury documents say Michael J. Lopatic Sr., of Manheim Township, repeatedly punched a police officer in the head during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol before tearing a body camera off another, LancasterOnline reports. The 57-year-old former Marine was joined on the FBI's list of Capitol breach defendants this week by Leo Brent Bozell IV, a Palmyra man seen wearing a Hershey Christian Academy sweatshirt in photos from the scene, according to PennLive.

POLLUTED: An unprecedented cleanup effort is underway at the site of a now-defunct South Philly refinery. Experts say it will take one decade and hundreds of millions of dollars to remedy 150 years of industrial pollution at the site, which was rocked by a massive explosion in 2019. Reuters reports the herculean effort is "a glimpse of what lies ahead if the United States hopes to wean itself off fossil fuels."

HOME SCHOOL: Gov. Tom Wolf has an idea to help with Pennsylvania's brain drain and the student debt crisis: scholarships to qualifying full-time undergraduate students at 14 state universities. The catch? They must agree to stay in Pennsylvania after graduating, Fox43 reports.