On Monday, the Board passed a preliminary budget for the
2013-2014 school year. Pennsylvania
requires that school districts vote on the budget twice and that there be at
least a 30 day time period between votes.
This is the reason that the first vote is considered a preliminary
vote.
The budget for the 2013-2014 totals $49,305,888.00. This is an increase of $632,572 (1.3%) over
the current budget. The district saved
over $800,000.00 by not replacing 7 retiring teachers and one central office
administrator. Since the 2007-2008
school year, the school district has trimmed teaching staff by 33
positions. The loss of teaching staff parallels
the school district's declining enrollment.
I know there is a lot of discussion in the media concerning the teacher
pension issue. Fortunately for the
school district, the Board started planning for this event years ago by putting
money aside for the sharp increases in contributions that the district will
realize in the upcoming years. There is
now more than $2,000,000.00 in the pension fund. With that being said, the school district has
not started to use the fund yet. As a
matter of fact, our budget projections indicate that with retirement
projections and the natural increase in State funding the district will be able
to withstand the pension increases (hopefully) without ever using the pension
fund; kudos to the Board and Administration when they started to plan for this
eventuality a few years ago. The budget
that was passed on Monday does not include a property tax increase. The Board will discuss whether they feel it
is beneficial to start adding millage to the renovation project. Currently, the Board has 10 mils available
for building renovation and they will discuss the merits (or demerits) of
slowly adding millage to that figure over the next few years starting at the
meeting on Monday, May 13th.
The budget can be viewed from our web site or people can
come to the administrative offices and view a hard copy. In addition, the budget presentation that was
presented to the Board can be found here.
Jez Dr. Butler, Mr. Lago, and the school board! So last year we were in deep do-do with pension funding. Then a few months ago we were funding renovations by no new taxes. We were just replacing debt - no need to have to worry about all the pension funding being involved with renovations. Now we got no pension problems. But we are thinking about increasing taxes for building renovations. I'm getting dizzy.
ReplyDeleteSandra
Please don't get dizzy, the Board is looking at how to fund any building improvements in the district beyond the current project. They are concerned about how to take care of the rest of the buildings over the next 10-15 years. I do not know what they will decide concerning the future fiscal responsibilities for other building projects so please contact a school board member to share your thoughts on the topic.
ReplyDeleteThis is a unique response that you normally don't do. I don't know if you are responding because I asked school board member Toni Ising to talk to you about responding to blog "dis-gruntled" comments so we don't get so dizzy. As far as I know, her re-election Facebook site is the first and only real school board source of information that engages the community. Others have tried to fill this void (The PT Register on Facebook) but no board insider has done anything. Ms. Ising has said she will continue her facebook site as a way to get the board's issues out if re-elected. I hope she gets re-elected because we need a way to encourge community engagement done without begging disgruntled comments. Such a school board siteand your blog would complement each other, and let the community see both the admin and school board perspectives. I'm still dizzy on the budget, pensions, renovations, and what's driving tax increases. On my skeptic side, I can understand why the admin and x-union guys on the board would not want to talk about pensions being the culprit since that begs the question about your pensions. I can understand why it would be a lot easier with respect to taxpayer agreement to get tax increases for renovations instead of pensions, so I'd prefer going with that approach. On the negative side, that approach hides the fact that the total compensation package for you admin and unions guys is way out of whack compared to a working mom like me in the private sector. I wish the board would try to do something about that in the upcoming union contracts.
ReplyDeleteSandra
I took your advice and asked a school board member (Toni Ising) for some budget information that I can't find in your link to the preliminary budget. I believe those request will involve Mr. Lago. Please support my request to the school board by helping Mr. Lago.
ReplyDeleteSandra
Does anybody know how I'm supposed to contact the school board. The school district's website contact of ptschoolboard@aol.com must not be used anymore since I get no responses on that. I prefer something like email instead of just calling a phone number. Does each of the board member have email addresses they like to use for board business? Or is Toni's site the only way to easily ask a board member a question?
ReplyDeleteBill
I liked to add two names, me and my wife, who would like to see the budget stuff that Sandra asked for. I'm copying and pasting what you put on Toni Isling's site. It would be nice to see that stuff soon so I can think about it and be ready to say something smart at the school board meeting to approve the budget. I'm not sure what the sample plots she mentions are. Thanks Dr. Butler and keep up the good work.
ReplyDelete" I would like to see easy to read bar graphs for the next ten years showing how the current PSERS reserve decays considering the annual additional of taxes tagged for PSERS, expected PT PSERS contributions, and therefore a projection of what year we run of money for PSERS if we do nothing more. I'd like this first case to assume the current building debt expires and no new building debt so it would be the "best case" for budget deficits. I'd like another couple of other cases,, One set would be what has been called "no new tax increases for renovations" by replacing existing debt with new deb, and then showing what budget deficits occur. This could be called something like "Tax Controlled Budget" The third case would be funding PSERS, replacing debt, then keeping renovation costs below any tax increases so as to not require a tax referendum per state law. Call this case "Referendum Avoidance" That's work for Lago?. Then I'd like to know the board's perspective on which case should be used for planning purposes and which case is a basis of Butler's statment in his blog about possible "gradual increasing of taxes for building renovations". As an example of these plots, see those on the PT Register."
Larry and Fiona
I was trying to do my own work so I could maybe say forget about my request and go back to work. But I must be making a mistake.Per slide 39 or the preliminary budget, if I understand all the acronyms, $8.9M of cumulative PSERS contributions are expected to be our obligation up to year 2017. We have a PSERS reserve of about $2M. Each year we get about $.7M added to the PSERS reserve from taxes tagged for PSERS. So up to 2017 we'll have $4.8M ((4 years * .7M) + $2M) of PSERS assets and to pay $8.9M of PSERS obligations. Sure would be nice if I could see a plot of whatever you think the is my Base Case: sum of PSERS Reserve + Taxes Tagged for PSERS - PSERS Contributions? That's case 1, I asked for. Case 2 would be to take Case 1 Results + Add Expiring Debt = "Funding PSERS and Renovations Without New Taxes". Case 3 would be Case 2 + Max tax increases without a tax referendum = Funds available for building renovations. Thanks and I'm sorry to request work from your staff.
ReplyDeleteSandra
Election candidate Micheal Morocco Sr will not say if he would support spending my PT tax money on fighting common core. Common core is PA law, not a school district issue. He also deletes my comments requesting not supporting spending PT funds on trying to work around laws using district funds to teach creationism. That route is a road to spending our money on legal defense. So by those actions, I'm assuming he will use PT funds at put us at risk for legislative costs to challenge these two issues. I can understand his concerns, and might even support them, but not with our budget money when we got other funding issues to address. We need building renovations, his issues are US and PA Supreme court issues, not PT issues. With his liabilities, taxpayer should be very concerned about voting for him. People - go vote or open up your wallet.
ReplyDeleteLarry
Ising makes commitments on her facebook site. Neimic doesn't answer PM request for positions. Harry Smith does not respond to request for positions. Can't find out how to contact other board members, or candidates. Still no answer from Butler about how to do that. Election phase is almost over, so good ducking for everybody except Ising who seems like she wants community questions to answers. I think this type comment is what is called a disgruntled comment.
ReplyDeleteBill
Revision, Neimeic did what we ashed. Bill
ReplyDeletePlease support a board resolution that future budgets will be accompanied by bounding cases as long as that doesn't cost a lot. Maybe those should be a quantitative set of three bounding cases providing simple plots for dummies like me to look at. Just an idea to get people on board. But if the board thinks that's a bad idea, OK. I asked as many candidates that I could during election thinking that would be a good time to ask.
ReplyDeleteSandra
I forgot an important thing so no one thinks I'm a bad woman. I asked, and I'm not going to get into who said what. Ever. All I'm saying is I did what you asked, I contacted board members, and even future members about this.
ReplyDeleteIs there any chance of getting an estimate of when those budget cases might be provided? This Friday May 24 would be nice. Don't spend a lot of time, its just a matter of taking the data that should already be in a data base and creating some plots. I would not like to see a lot of time and money spent on this. And I wouldn't like to pay for somebody to work on the weekend to get it done, but even at that it shouldn't take more than an hour on Saturday.
ReplyDeleteSandra
Please be aware there is an on-going discussion topic on Ising;s Facebook site about the advantages/disadvantages of a school board community engagement site. Chip in your two cents.
ReplyDeleteLarry
This budget is a recipe for disaster. It has no basis. It is not transparent. You have to beg to get any anwers. Dr. Butler does not answer budget questions here. He says to contact a school board member. So you contact every school board member with some basic questions. Zero, zippo, nothing. So try sending a question to the email listed on the school district site. For one year, zero, zippo, nothing.
ReplyDeleteWhat kind of school system would not have, in file, available for public review - bounding cases on a budget-- at the time of a near term board meeting to approve the budget - and take a 10 days to respond to a taxpayer request? But if they need 7 days to get the numbers to match what they said, that is not encouraging either.
Beware, the election is over, back to the same old school board, leading us down a "trust me" road, doing their pet projects at our expense, not providing any information, leaving us to go a school board meeting to watch the show on what they have decided to do, no justification for actions.
Last year, pension funding was an impending disaster on the budget. This year, pensions OK, and not only that but we got enough money to do millions of dollars of building renovations. How's that you ask, can we see a few plots of bounding budget cases? Oh, that's a neat idea, the board says. But now, the numbers don't match the board's words. Taxpayers wake up, the board has a hidden agenda, not sure what, but we gonna pay for it.
What kind of school system would not have, in file, available for public review - bounding cases on a budget-- at the time of a near term board meeting to approve the budget - and take a 10 days to respond to a taxpayer request? But if they need 7 days to get the numbers to match what they said, that is not encouraging either.
Mike