Investing in public education excellence that allows students to succeed is the path to thriving communities, a stable economy, and a more competitive workforce. Every child, regardless of zip code, has a right to an excellent public education, which requires access to a full curriculum, art and music classes, counselors and librarians, technical opportunities, and a safe, clean, stable school environment.

Now, we have a ruling from the Commonwealth Court that emphatically agrees that our system of funding public education in the Commonwealth is broken. This ruling is a repudiation of a bare-bones system of public education that opponents of this lawsuit defended in court during the trial.

The state is failing to meet its constitutional obligation to ensure that all students get a quality education, no matter where they live. We need a budget that builds on Governor Shapiro's proposal to increase education funding, representing the kind of down payment needed to begin dealing with the deep inequities in the state’s school funding system.

And we need a budget that allocates no additional public funds for private and religious schools through new voucher programs. It's time to make real strides to close our public education funding gap, as mandated by the decision in the school funding lawsuit.