An Act amending the act of March 10, 1949 (P.L.30, No.14), known as the Public School Code of 1949, in preliminary provisions, providing for financial transparency data and reporting system.

PRINTER'S NO. 1693
THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF PENNSYLVANIA
HOUSE BILL
No. 1448
Session of
2025
INTRODUCED BY ORTITAY, STENDER, KUZMA AND M. MACKENZIE,
MAY 13, 2025
REFERRED TO COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION, MAY 13, 2025
AN ACT
Amending the act of March 10, 1949 (P.L.30, No.14), entitled "An
act relating to the public school system, including certain
provisions applicable as well to private and parochial
schools; amending, revising, consolidating and changing the
laws relating thereto," in preliminary provisions, providing
for financial transparency data and reporting system.
The General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
hereby enacts as follows:
Section 1. The act of March 10, 1949 (P.L.30, No.14), known
as the Public School Code of 1949, is amended by adding a
section to read:
Section 132.1. Financial Transparency Data and Reporting
System.--(a) The department shall develop and implement a basic
education funding transparency data and reporting system.
(b) The system shall consist of a longitudinal data system
that incorporates the following:
(1) Basic education funding subsidies and appropriations.
(2) Revenue and expenditure data for no less than the last
ten (10) years disaggregated by school entity.
(3) Data visualization dashboards that simulate changes to
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the basic education funding formula, such as changing weights
and measures of funding appropriations, overall funding support
and distributions of funding based on school characteristics.
The data visualization dashboards shall be accessible to
appropriate staff at State agencies and the General Assembly.
(c) To ensure reliability of data and accuracy of reporting,
the system shall:
(1) Be unbiased regarding data type and capable of accessing
and integrating any data type from any data system across
participating feeder systems from State agencies, school
entities and other partners.
(2) Have advanced data management capabilities to clean and
prepare data, create master records and flag any data errors or
missing data.
(3) Have automated data governance capabilities to audit and
track the lineage of data edits and changes by different
authorized users.
(4) Have advanced analytics functionality, including data
mining and machine learning capabilities to analyze the
longitudinal data for program evaluation and apply predictive
analytics for forecasting and projections into the future and
natural language processing that allows partner entities to
analyze large volumes of text found in surveys, grants,
accreditation reports and other text-heavy documents.
(5) Have business intelligence capabilities for State
agencies, school entities and other partners to easily generate
reporting and visualizations through a low-code or no-code drag-
and-drop interface.
(6) Include public-facing dashboards that only include
aggregate-level data that is appropriate for the general public
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to view.
(7) Include restricted dashboards and environments for State
agencies, school entities and other partners to view data that
is subject to the protections of the Family Educational Rights
and Privacy Act of 1974 (Public Law 90-247, 20 U.S.C. § 1232g)
with role-based permissions.
(8) Support data exchanges and interoperability with the
department and other existing data systems in the Commonwealth
to be identified by the department.
(9) Ensure routine and ongoing compliance with the Family
Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 and other relevant
Federal and State privacy laws and regulations, by:
(i) using de-identified data in data research and public
reporting;
(ii) implementing the Commonwealth's established policy for
small cell suppression;
(iii) disposing of information that is no longer needed;
(iv) providing data security, including the capacity for
audit trails;
(v) performing regular audits for compliance with data
privacy and security standards; and
(vi) implementing guidelines and policies that prevent the
reporting of any potentially identifying data.
(d) The department may expand the system to include
allocations, revenues, disbursements and expenditures at the
local school entity level.
(e) The department may contract with third parties to
develop the system. A contract awarded under this section shall
be subject to 62 Pa.C.S. Pt. I (relating to Commonwealth
Procurement Code).
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(f) The department may use Federal, State and other money
appropriated or otherwise made available for the program.
(g) As used in this section, the following words and phrases
shall have the meanings given to them in this subsection unless
the context clearly indicates otherwise:
"Department." The Department of Education of the
Commonwealth.
"Longitudinal data system." A data system that collects data
from the same population or entities over multiple years.
"School entity." A school district, intermediate unit, area
career and technical school, charter school, cyber charter
school, regional charter school or multiple charter school
organization.
"Small cell suppression." A disclosure limitation method to
protect student privacy when reporting data that involves
removing or suppressing data from cells in data tables to
prevent the identification of individuals in small groups or
those with unique characteristics.
"System." The financial transparency data and reporting
system established by this section.
Section 2. This act shall take effect in 60 days.
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