HB 1448 — 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
 1   Amending the act of March 10, 1949 (P.L.30, No.14), entitled "An
 2      act relating to the public school system, including certain
 3      provisions applicable as well to private and parochial
 4      schools; amending, revising, consolidating and changing the
 5      laws relating thereto," in preliminary provisions, providing
 6      for financial transparency data and reporting system.
 7      The General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
 8   hereby enacts as follows:
 9      Section 1.    The act of March 10, 1949 (P.L.30, No.14), known
10   as the Public School Code of 1949, is amended by adding a
11   section to read:
12      Section 132.1.    Financial Transparency Data and Reporting
13   System.--(a)    The department shall develop and implement a basic
14   education funding transparency data and reporting system.
15      (b)   The system shall consist of a longitudinal data system
16   that incorporates the following:
17      (1)   Basic education funding subsidies and appropriations.
18      (2)   Revenue and expenditure data for no less than the last
19   ten (10) years disaggregated by school entity.
20      (3)   Data visualization dashboards that simulate changes to
 1   the basic education funding formula, such as changing weights
 2   and measures of funding appropriations, overall funding support
 3   and distributions of funding based on school characteristics.
 4   The data visualization dashboards shall be accessible to
 5   appropriate staff at State agencies and the General Assembly.
 6      (c)   To ensure reliability of data and accuracy of reporting,
 7   the system shall:
 8      (1)   Be unbiased regarding data type and capable of accessing
 9   and integrating any data type from any data system across
10   participating feeder systems from State agencies, school
11   entities and other partners.
12      (2)   Have advanced data management capabilities to clean and
13   prepare data, create master records and flag any data errors or
14   missing data.
15      (3)   Have automated data governance capabilities to audit and
16   track the lineage of data edits and changes by different
17   authorized users.
18      (4)   Have advanced analytics functionality, including data
19   mining and machine learning capabilities to analyze the
20   longitudinal data for program evaluation and apply predictive
21   analytics for forecasting and projections into the future and
22   natural language processing that allows partner entities to
23   analyze large volumes of text found in surveys, grants,
24   accreditation reports and other text-heavy documents.
25      (5)   Have business intelligence capabilities for State
26   agencies, school entities and other partners to easily generate
27   reporting and visualizations through a low-code or no-code drag-
28   and-drop interface.
29      (6)   Include public-facing dashboards that only include
30   aggregate-level data that is appropriate for the general public

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 1   to view.
 2      (7)     Include restricted dashboards and environments for State
 3   agencies, school entities and other partners to view data that
 4   is subject to the protections of the Family Educational Rights
 5   and Privacy Act of 1974 (Public Law 90-247, 20 U.S.C. § 1232g)
 6   with role-based permissions.
 7      (8)     Support data exchanges and interoperability with the
 8   department and other existing data systems in the Commonwealth
 9   to be identified by the department.
10      (9)     Ensure routine and ongoing compliance with the Family
11   Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 and other relevant
12   Federal and State privacy laws and regulations, by:
13      (i)     using de-identified data in data research and public
14   reporting;
15      (ii)     implementing the Commonwealth's established policy for
16   small cell suppression;
17      (iii)     disposing of information that is no longer needed;
18      (iv)     providing data security, including the capacity for
19   audit trails;
20      (v)     performing regular audits for compliance with data
21   privacy and security standards; and
22      (vi)     implementing guidelines and policies that prevent the
23   reporting of any potentially identifying data.
24      (d)     The department may expand the system to include
25   allocations, revenues, disbursements and expenditures at the
26   local school entity level.
27      (e)     The department may contract with third parties to
28   develop the system. A contract awarded under this section shall
29   be subject to 62 Pa.C.S. Pt. I (relating to Commonwealth
30   Procurement Code).

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 1      (f)   The department may use Federal, State and other money
 2   appropriated or otherwise made available for the program.
 3      (g)   As used in this section, the following words and phrases
 4   shall have the meanings given to them in this subsection unless
 5   the context clearly indicates otherwise:
 6      "Department."   The Department of Education of the
 7   Commonwealth.
 8      "Longitudinal data system."    A data system that collects data
 9   from the same population or entities over multiple years.
10      "School entity."   A school district, intermediate unit, area
11   career and technical school, charter school, cyber charter
12   school, regional charter school or multiple charter school
13   organization.
14      "Small cell suppression."    A disclosure limitation method to
15   protect student privacy when reporting data that involves
16   removing or suppressing data from cells in data tables to
17   prevent the identification of individuals in small groups or
18   those with unique characteristics.
19      "System."    The financial transparency data and reporting
20   system established by this section.
21      Section 2.   This act shall take effect in 60 days.




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