Apr 3, 2002 3 min read

During the next few months you will be hearing much about the cost to educate students in our public school systems. Each of the county’s school districts must develop a tentative budget for the 2002-03 school term by the end of May. This year it is anticipated that districts will have a much more difficult time making the bottom line balance without looking to local property owners to make up the difference. Don’t be surprised if after all the penciling in, erasing, crossing out and adding in are finished, the result is a higher tax bill.

Already school boards are at work looking at preliminary numbers. There isn’t much to like. Gov. Mark Schweiker has announced that the districts shouldn’t look to Harrisburg for help. His proposed budget calls for just a 1 percent increase in basic education subsidies, which is a sum much lower than districts have come to expect from a state that already fails to adequately fund education.

If that weren’t enough to contend with, the General Assembly deal brokers last spring cut a devil’s bargain with former Gov. Tom Ridge. In exchange for backing some of Ridge’s education programs (such as public money to hire private tutors and write-offs for businesses that provide scholarships) lawmakers gained a lofty pension boost for themselves and future retiring teachers. At the time, they said this wouldn’t cost taxpayers anything. But they were wrong. The stock market tanked, causing a loss in these publicly-funded pension plans. So now instead of just having to come up with money to maintain the same level of service, districts will be hit with huge pension fund bills that school boards had absolutely no say in incurring.

For example, Connellsville Area School District – which is facing a $3.7 million difference between anticipated expenses and revenue – will pay about 400 percent more, or $600,000, into the retirement fund.

By far the retirement fund is the largest unexpected increase heaped upon districts by the state. School budgets, as a rule, go up each year simply because of built in increases to run the schools from contractual wage hikes for teachers to janitors, to rising transportation costs. Even the escalating price on a case of head lettuce eventually wilts districts’ treasures.

So what can be done about this?

Keeping the public informed every step of the way ought to be foremost. Connellsville is off to a good start with its board and administrators talking about the deficit to fund its $53.6 million budget. The board has three choices: make substantial cuts in programs, raise taxes or a combination of those two.

None of those choices comes easy. No one wants to cut art or music classes or driver’s education or elementary physical education programs or delay ordering textbooks. No one wants to furlough teachers, enlarge classrooms or shutter school buildings. And no one wants to pay more in taxes.

Regardless of what cuts school boards make, somebody is bound to be upset. That is why it is best if each school board decides early in this process to present as much information as it can to the public so that everyone knows what programs are untouchable and what are expendable.

The more information that is brought before the public, the easier it will be to find a solution for balancing this year’s books.

Who knows, taxpayers, parents, teachers and maybe even students might have a few ideas that could work.

At the very least taxpayers will gain some assurance that the school boards evaluated all the tough choices in cutting programs before reaching deeper into their pockets.