Peters Township School District received a 3.6% increase or $5,166,937 in Pennsylvania Basic Education Funding. This is $177,612 more than its 2012-13 state BEF to the district. Additionally, Peters Township School District received $86,100 in Accountability Block Grant funding to focus on academic achievement and level funding for special education services. Among the public school districts in Washington County, Peters Township School District received the highest percentage increase in BEF. The district had the option of applying for several other state and federal grants to increase revenues. The Commonwealth's budget increased Basic Education Funding statewide by $123 million to over $5.5 billion. Most of Pennsylvania's 500 public school districts received an increase of Basic Education Funding in a range of 0.9% to 4%. Eight public school districts received exceptionally high funding increases of 10% to 16%. The highest increase in state funding was awarded to Austin Area School District which received a 22.5% increase in Basic Education Funding. The highest percent of state spending per student is in the Chester-Upland School District, where roughly 78 percent comes from state coffers. In Philadelphia, it is nearly 49 percent. As a part of the education budget, the state provided the PSERS (Pennsylvania school employee pension fund) with $1,017,000,000 and Social Security payments for school employees of $495 million.