Court Opinion

ID: 9752428
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 18:07:13.094786+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:45:31.357444
License: Public Domain

LARSEN, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent.
The version of section 2502(d) of the School Code applicable to the instant case provides:
“For the school year commencing the first day of July [of 1968] and each school year thereafter, each school district shall be paid by the Commonwealth on account of instruction of the district’s pupils an amount to be determined by multiplying the market value/income aid ratio times the actual instruction expense per weighted average daily membership or by five hundred fifty dollars ($550), whichever is less, and by the weighted average daily membership for the district. For the school year 1973-1974 and each school year thereafter each school district shall be paid by the Commonwealth on account of instruction of the district’s pupils an amount to be determined by multiplying the aid ratio times the actual instruction expense per weighted average daily membership or by seven hundred fifty dollars ($750), whichever is less.”
The critical portion of the subsidy formula prescribed by this section is “average daily membership”. Average daily *153membership, which the legislature found unnecessary to define in the School Code, is composed of non-technical words which should be construed “according to their common and approved usage.” Act of December 6, 1972, P.L. 1339, No. 290, § 3, 1 Pa.C.S.A. § 1903(a). Accordingly, average daily membership should be construed to mean the average enrollment in the school district for each day of the instruction period. Such a reading effectuates the obvious purpose of the statute-to provide the same subsidy (before application of the aid ratio) for every school district which spends more than $750 per pupil1 without regard to the specific number of days of instruction given in expending that sum-and is mandated by section 1921(a) of the Statutory Construction Act of 1972, Act of December 6,1972, supra, 1 Pa.C.S.A. § 1921(a).2 I would, therefore, hold that school districts should not receive reduced subsidies when strikes have prevented them from providing 180 days of instruction.
The majority, however, has reached a different conclusion by “interpreting” the statute and distorting the meaning of average daily membership. “Average daily membership”, according to the majority, is not the sum of the enrollments for each day of instruction divided by the days of instruction given, it is the sum of the enrollments for each day of instruction divided by an arbitrary figure of 180.3 If the legislature wished to utilize the subsidy formula contained in section 2502(d) as a penalty which enforces the 180 day instruction provision of section 1501, it would have done so expressly, as it has done in the past when it desired to enforce other parts of the Code. See, e. g., §§ 2519 and 2552.
*154The sad thing about the majority opinion is that it penalizes the citizens of urban areas (Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Erie, Scranton, etc. and their suburbs) in two ways. First, the tax dollars which they have paid to the Commonwealth for education are being withdrawn; and second, the shortage from this withdrawal must be made up by increasing these citizens’ local school taxes. It is these very urban areas that can least afford this type of unfair “double taxation”.
I would affirm the order of the Commonwealth Court.
KAUFFMAN, J., joins in this dissenting opinion.

. If a school district spends less than $750 per pupil, the problem presented in the instant case does not arise.

. That section provides that “[t]he object of all interpretation and construction of statutes is to ascertain and effectuate the intention of the General Assembly.”

. It is unclear what the majority will do with school districts that provide more than 180 days of instruction. Presumably, the arbitrary 180-day figure will be used for these districts as well, and other unfair distortions will occur in the subsidy allocations.