One by one, my Republican colleagues ascended the impressive dark wood podium in the Pennsylvania House chamber. They rose on that mid-June session day to speak in opposition to our bill to support every student and, at last, fairly fund every school district.

 To me, each of their messages sounded similar:

 — Public schools are hopeless. 

— We can help public schools by pulling kids out and sending them to private schools. 

— Public schools are a failed experiment.

— Funding public schools won’t improve them— in fact, more money may cause more harm.

 The last one, I thought, was particularly silly. Hmm. “Mo Money Mo Problems?” 

 Horace Mann, the father of American public education, famously proclaimed education as "the great equalizer" of people. But the wrongheaded comments by my Republican colleagues that day reminded me of the mournful lyrics by American rapper Nas. "Hip hop just died this morning, And she's dead… she's dead."

 On that June day, those legislators appeared ready to call it. As in,“Public education's dead. And she's dead… she's dead.”

 That message of permanently shattering our public education system was jarring. A bipartisan group of legislators spent the last year touring the state, gathering schools’ input and hearing from superintendents, teachers, and students to create this landmark funding bill. 

 After years of legislative inaction, HB 2370 was the overall product of that labor — a measured and fair bill supported by the governor that would put us on a clear path to close the massive deficit in our schools’ funding. 

 Opposing this bill seemed irresponsible. To some, it sounded unconscionable.

 Democratic Majority Leader Matt Bradford summed up the fallacy behind the arguments by House Republicans that day by quoting a lawyer for the former State Sen. Jake Corman, a Republican who served as president pro tempore of the Senate and asked a rural school superintendent, "What use does someone on the McDonald's career track have for Algebra I? … There's a need for retail workers, for people who know how to flip a pizza crust…."

 Whether they end up in a career in food service, nursing, or education, my Democratic House colleagues and I believe that every child has a constitutional right to a high-quality education.

 We believe that some of our public schools need help, not because they are a failed experiment, but because of an unconstitutional and inequitable lack of funding from the legislature. A Commonwealth Court ruling last year, in a nearly 800-page decision, found that how our legislature funds schools violates the constitutional guarantee that all students have access to a "thorough and efficient" education.

 The author of that decision, President Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer, was elected as a Republican.

 Democratic Majority Appropriations Chair Jordan Harris said it best: "You can't starve a system and then blame it for its inadequacies."

 It's our obligation as legislators and moral responsibility to our children — and the future of our commonwealth — to fully fund our schools. There should be bipartisan consensus on that. HB2370 puts us on track to right that historic wrong. Our bill will deliver an additional $1.4 billion to Philadelphia public schools over seven years. The savings and investments for Philadelphia public schools under this bill are estimated to be over $362 million next year alone. 

 Money is not the answer to all our commonwealth’s problems, but it is the answer to not having enough money. All public school students can have an opportunity to succeed, but we must give districts like the Philadelphia School District the resources to support all of them.

 Bills like HB2370 are also critical because, without state funding, counties like Philadelphia could be forced to raise property taxes again to fund public schools on the local level if we don't use some of Pennsylvania’s $15 billion surplus to fund schools on the state level. 

 At the end of the day, five of our Republican legislator co-workers joined all 101 of my Democratic colleagues in voting to pass HB 2370. Public education is, in fact, NOT dead in Pennsylvania. HB 2370 now goes on to the state Senate.

 Back in the chamber that day, HB 2370 lead sponsor Rep. Mike Sturla, a Democrat, concluded his testimony and his career-long effort towards achieving equitable education by quoting the great Pennsylvania statesperson, the late Republican Congressman Thaddeus Stevens:

 "Casting our votes that the blessing of education, 

Shall be conferred on every [child] of Pennsylvania, 

Shall be carried home to the poorest child,

Of the poorest inhabitant,

Of the meanest hut of our mountains,

So that even he may be prepared to act well his part,

In this land of freedom."

(State Rep. Tarik Khan represents Manayunk, Roxborough, parts of Chestnut Hill, and East Falls. )