Taxes to rise slightly for Kennett property owners

KENNETT SQUARE » School taxes won’t being going up in the Kennett school district as much as they looked like a month ago.

At the April meeting of the Kennett Consolidated School District’s board, the members approved a 2.27 percent tax increase on a 2018-19 budget of $86.3 million, for a tax increase of $123 on the average $330,000 residential property, according to the board’s Treasurer Michael H. Finnegan.

But at that meeting, Finnegan said he hoped the actual budget figures and resulting taxes would be lower after some variables were accounted for. “We’ve always managed to get it down before,” he said then.

And as it turned out, Finnegan

was able to announce at last night’s May meeting of the school board that adjustments to the budget brought it down to $86.2 million, allowing a reduction of the tax increase to 1.97 percent, which would be an average tax hike of $103.

Finnegan said these are now the final budget figures. The budget went down

because of four retirements, better interest income, and a reduction in the district’s workers’ compensation insurance rate, he said.

In other business, the board approved a “first reading,” or introduction of a proposed policy manual change, formally allowing the use of naloxone to treat opioid drug overdoses.

Diane Shannon, the district’s school health coordinator, said many other districts in the county have such a policy, and the state Legislature has recommended

them. Naloxone can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose.

Shannon said school nurses would be trained and ready to administer the drug if needed, and that school resource officers carry it and are trained in its use as well. The school administration could decide which, if any, other personnel would be appropriate to be trained to provide it.

“We don’t anticipate that any of our students would need this, but in the event

that would happen, we would be prepared,” said Barry Tomasetti, the school district superintendent.

In other business, board member William Brown recommended the board join the Pennsylvania School Board Association in opposing PA House Bill 638, which would disallow school board candidates to cross-file as both Republicans and Democrats. The bill passed the state House in April and now moves on to the Senate.

Brown said the fear is the bill, if passed, would increase the level of partisan politics in school boards.

Both Tomasetti and Joseph Meola recommended that Brown send the other members information about the bill so they could be better informed before making a decision, and Brown agreed to do so.

School breakfast and lunch prices would remain the same as last year, according to Mark Tracy, the assistant to the superintendent for business affairs. This would keep the price for breakfast at $1.50, with lunches for elementary students remaining at $2.75 and $3.00 for middle- and high-schoolers.

A number of younger students attended the meeting to receive awards for achievement in math.

Tomasetti announced that the high school had been ranked among the top 6 percent of high schools in the country by U.S. News & World Report, being listed as the 1,412th school from the top in the nation among the 20,548 schools ranked.