Uniontown Area furloughs teachers, raises taxes
Uniontown Area School Board on Thursday approved the furlough of three part-time teachers and an administrator, and did not renew the contracts of three full-time teachers and two part-time teachers.
Even with the furloughs and non-renewals, the board adopted a 2024-25 final budget that raises property taxes by 7.1%, as it struggled to close a shortfall of nearly $3 million.
“This is a challenging time for us. You never want to lose any of your teaching staff, but the administration and board did work hard to reduce the numbers as much as possible, and we didn’t lose any programs,” said Assistant Superintendent Dr. Dan Bosnic. “That’s important to us not to remove any educational programs.”
The furloughs included three part-time cyber school teachers and an administrator who served in a community resource role at Ben Franklin Elementary/Middle School. Teachers whose contracts were not renewed included a special education teacher, a biology teacher, a reading specialist, all of whom were full-time teachers, and two part-time cyber teachers.
The board approved a budget with expenditures of $58,129,227 and revenues of $55,182,015. It raised taxes 7.1%, from 16.64 mills to 17.82 mills. A mill is a $1 tax levy on each $1,000 of assessed property value.
Part of the budget shortfall was made up by using a portion of the $6.7 million fund balance.
Bosnic believes state officials must increase state funding to adequately match growing costs to local districts.
“There are a lot of areas where we feel we’re underfunded, such as special education, in terms of what the state provides,” said Bosnic. “We are hoping the state looks at its budget and makes sure districts like ours are adequately funded.”
He noted the cyber charter tuition presents a budgetary challenge for a school district the size of Uniontown. The district will pay $3.4 million in cyber school tuition in 2024-25, and has launched its own cyber school to curtail costs.
“It has been a challenge to prepare a balanced budget, but we’ll work through this difficult time and make sure we provide a quality education for our students,” said Bosnic.