The Reading School District will receive $41 million in state funding for the 2024-25 school year thanks to a bipartisan state budget passed by the General Assembly and signed by Gov. Josh Shapiro in July.
The amount represents an increase of just over $10 million more than the district received in state funding in the last school year.
The governor and Secretary of Education Dr. Khalid N. Mumin joined state legislators, students, teachers and others Friday at Reading’s Amanda E. Stout Elementary School for a ceremonial bill signing and program highlighting the investments in public education in the budget, including the creation of a new adequacy formula to drive dollars to schools most in need.
“Reading School District is slated to get $41 million in new money, right?” Shapiro said. “But listen, $25.6 million is coming to this district because we changed the formula to make sure it’s going to the places that need it most. And that is going to have a massive impact for years to come. That’s a huge win.”
The new budget includes an additional $285 million in basic education funding and an increase of $100 million in special education funding. It also includes a $526 million funding increase through the Ready to Learn Block Grants program, intended to enhance learning opportunities and provide resources for schools to innovate at the local level.
This year’s Ready to Learn grants also are serving as the conduit for what the governor has called adequacy funding meant to help even the playing field for historically underfunded districts.
“I remember stepping out before you and saying that Reading School District was the most underfunded and under-resourced district and the commonwealth,” said Mumin, formerly the district’s superintendent. “We simply just wanted an opportunity to have an even playing field.”
Mumin thanked Shapiro for spearheading historic investments in education for two consecutive budget years.
“And I’ll tell you, with these investments, our schools are poised for generations of greatness,” Mumin said.
The funding builds on the state’s investment in education in 2023-24 and will enable Reading to continue, expand and build on initiatives begun last school year, district Superintendent Dr. Jennifer Murray said.
The funding will provide more access to resources such as mental-health support; more teachers for a greater teacher to student ratio; and more reading proficiency classes to get younger students off to a good start, she said.
One of the many initiatives funded with last year’s state money, Murray said, is a program called Beyond the Classroom, which provides students with three educational field trips per year. Children were able to visit the Reading Public Museum and many other places, she said.
Funding also was directed to professional development for teachers, safety and security measures in the schools, rehabilitation of older buildings and facilities along with expanded staffing, including more teachers, social workers, counselors and safe-schools officers, along with higher wages for staff.
The district was able to offer paid internships that provided high school students with hands-on experience in the career fields of their choice, Murray said.
“This was a different kind of learning for students that does not occur in the classroom,” she said.
Some of the interns served as teaching assistants in elementary and middle schools and worked with younger students in after-school and summer programming. For several, the experience sparked a desire to become teachers, Murray said.
“Now remember, our students are 90% Latino; they are bilingual and bicultural,” she said. “We now have a pool of potential teacher candidates who will help support our diversity and build a diverse population of teachers in the Reading School District in four years.”
One of these interns is Jose Martinez, who worked with third-graders in the United Way of Berks County-funded Ready.Set.Read! program.
The internship not only gave him teaching experience but provided him with a small income and lessons in budgeting and investing.
Now entering his junior year at Reading High School, Martinez said he knows firsthand how much the state’s increase in funding for education will benefit district students.
Other speakers at the event included Sen. Judy Schwank, Rep. Manny Guzman Jr. and Brian Benkert, president of the Reading Education Association.
Shapiro invited the audience of teachers, school board members, parents and students to join him at the table for the ceremonial signing, which was followed by a brief question and answer session.
