4/12/21 School board Meeting Guide

Next year’s budget was the main topic at last night’s school board meeting. The administration proposed reducing the tax increase from 3.6% to 3.0% and moving $10 million in one-time, unspent money to a fund that will help pay for needed remodeling or replacement of school buildings in the future. Overall the revised budget has a structural deficit of just under $1 million, but some idiosyncrasies in how state reimbursement and charter school enrollments work provide some confidence that this deficit will essentially fix itself next year. As part of this budget revision, the administration also proposed hiring a new elementary school teacher (replacing one of the two that were lost in last year’s budget cuts), a new remedial reading specialist at the high school (four high school teachers were lost to last year’s cuts), and spending $65,000 on a program to support social and emotional learning.

You can watch the discussion here and view the presentation slides here. There was no budget vote last night. We will vote on a proposed final budget May 10 and a final budget on June 14.

PS: Want to know more about structural deficits, proposed final budgets, and more? (And who doesn’t, really?) Check out my East Penn School Budget 101.

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