Upper Darby School District outlines 2018-19 budget calendar

UPPERDARBY» Two months into the current fiscal year, administrators in the Upper Darby School District are wasting no time with next year’s budget.

District Chief Financial Officer Patrick Grant released the 2018-19 budget calendar at a recent school board meeting giving a detailed outline of events pertaining to the adoption of a budget by June 30, 2018.

Starting on Sept. 1, the Pennsylvania Department of Education will release the Act 1 base index with school districts knowing their individual indices on Sept. 30. The Act 1 index pertains to the highest possible tax increase a school district is allowed to issue before going to voter referendum.

No major action is scheduled until a special voting session of the board on Dec. 19 when it will approve a preliminary 2018-19 budget, or pass a resolution in- dicating that taxes will not be raised above the Act 1 index.

If in December the board agrees to a preliminary budget, it will be presented on Jan. 23 and then formally adopted on Feb. 3. A preliminary budget will not be presented if the board adopts the Dec. 19 resolution to not raise taxes over its index.

Come May 16, the proposed final budget will be presented and made available for public inspection with adoption on May 22.

The final budget, tax lev y and a homestead/ farmstead exclusion resolution will be adopted during a special meeting of the board on June 19.

With a tentative calendar laid out for the budget, a monetary figure has yet to be attached to it, though it will most certainly crack the $200 million point considering the current year budget was adopted at $199 million, up $10 million from the 2016-17 spending plan.

Contributing factors into the budget will include the ever-increasing contributions to the Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement pension program (PSERS) and potential savings in charter school payments after the district launched its own cyber academy this year. The cyber academy was established to lure back students from (online) charter schools. With each student enrolled in a cyber charter school that elects to attend the Upper Darby Cyber Academy instead, there will be a reduced expenditure to char- ter schools in the amount of approximately $9,500 per regular education student and $27,900 per each special education student.

Online charter school payments were expected to rise to $4.7 million this year for approximately 470 students, equal to 2.35 percent of the overall budget. According to district spokeswoman Dana Spino, 100 regular education students would have to return to the district from a charter school to realize savings after the initial investment.