School districts fighting uphill battle with budgets
Pension costs, charter schools mean tax hikes
Despite tax increases among a number of Delaware County school districts, the trend across the state is that despite additional revenue from residents, the school districts cannot overcome the difference in pension and charter school contributions.
Through a survey by the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators (PASA) and the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials (PASBO) of two-thirds of schools in Pennsylvania, three increases in Basic Education Funding and Special Education Funding since 2011 from the state were offset by rising pension costs, special education costs, health insurance and tuition contributions to charter schools.
“We can’t do anything different than we have the last seven state budgets beyond cuts of programs and personnel to reduce costs and property taxes increases,” said Jay Himes, PASBO executive director. “Districts are spending their reserves and will be until we get to a point where we don’t see local contributions overwhelmed by additional mandated resources we face.”
A requirement of school districts to pay a certain percentage of their total payroll into the Public School Employees Retirement System is reimbursed by the state for less than half of the costs. Since 2009-10, the required employer contributions have risen from 4.78 percent of payroll to 30.03 this year.
“Those costs are consuming all available property tax revenue and school districts are forced with finding the rest of school budget from state dollars or continued cuts in programs to reduce personnel costs,” Himes said in a phone conference this week.
“We’re at the same place we’ve been before, we’re marching backwards,” he said.
While the PASA and PASBO does not release information on a per-school basis, in Delaware County many school districts are hiking taxes for the next school year — Garnet Valley, Rose Tree Media, Springfield, Interboro, Upper Darby and Southeast Delco, are among them.
Chris Wilson, district director of business and support services, said Garnet Valley’s increase of 2.46 percent tax increase was in response to reduced funding from the federal government and level funding for special education despite growing expenditures.
Mandated pension costs present a substantial impact. They’re increasing by just less than $500,000, with the total representing 15 percent of the overall budget.
“Districts are doing everything they can just to try to cover those mandated costs and deal with the uncertainty that they’re facing in the state budget,” said Hannah Barrick, the director of advocacy for the PASBO.
Mark DiRocco, the executive director of PASA, laid out the impacts these would have on school districts:
Class sizes are increasing in 52 districts, which is “not good for children and their learning opportunities,” DiRocco said, while 28 districts will delay textbook purchases.
Since 2010-11, Pennsylvania has 8,000 fewer teachers and 12,000 fewer support staff employees; 21 percent of Pennsylvania school districts have closed at least one school.
In 2017-18, 15 percent of districts will furlough employees, and 50 percent won’t fill vacancies.
Many schools have delayed repairs and new construction projects, many of which have those needs based on the conditions of aging buildings.
“This is representative of a seven-year trend of schools having to make cuts to balance budgets,” DiRocco said. “There’s a very bad looming structural deficit in the budget, we won’t be able to offer quality education because of limitations in the budget.”
Rose Tree Media will raise taxes on residents by 2.98 percent; Upper Darby will increase 2.99 percent; and Springfield will raise taxes by 2.98 percent.
Despite the continuing doom and gloom of the Pennsylvania schools, the bright spot was highlighted for schools with low tax bases.
“The status of the economic rebound has allowed those districts to have a tax base, and they’ve been able to carry a substantial part of the their education contributions,” Himes said.