Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro has joined two dozen states and the District of Columbia in a lawsuit against the federal government for withholding funds already allocated by Congress for the coming school year.

It adds up to $230-million in federal funds for things like teacher training, English as a second language instruction, class size reduction and after school help.

Millcreek Township School District Chief Financial Officer Aaron O'Toole said for his district its a loss of about $240-thousand dollars that is already in the spending play for this year's budget.  "We fund two positions with the Title II funding we receive and then for the Title III it's a lot of our MLL, our English as a second language population, so we use some software and some professional development and some supplies," O'Toole said. 

To avoid cuts in personnel and programs Millcreek Township School District will have to dip into its reserves. "We plan to go status quo for this coming school year - we have a plan in place if we don't get the funding - we'll end up using our fund balance to offset that for this current fiscal year and then we'll pivot in our budget creation for the following year, for the '26-'27 school year."