Budget requests add to already looming debt in U.D. School District
UPPER DARBY » Staffing and other requests have given the Upper Darby School Board $3.7 million worth of options to consider in an over $200 million draft proposed budget unveiled Tuesday night.
The draft budget, referred to by Chief Financial Officer Patrick Grant as preliminary, was presented with two possibilities of what the district’s 2018-19 budget may look like. Where the expenditures went up, so did the deficit.
The first possibility looks at a $205.7 million budget with a $9.55 million shortfall. The second possibility would up the expenditures to $209.48 million with a $13.27 million shortfall to include fulfillment of district-wide staffing needs amounting to 47.2 positions at $3.5 million and investing in NeuroLOGIC, a trauma-informed care professional development plan at $197,000.
Right before the budget presentation Assistant Superintendent John Council explained the bevy of staffing requests include seven assistant principals at the elementary schools which would help building principals with teacher evaluations, the day-today operations of the schools and to retain those persons at administrative levels. Additional staffing requests include six special education teaching assistants, five contracted behavior analysts, three school psychologists and two school social workers.
Staffing requests run the gamut from professional staff to technicians and support staff through contracted, non-contracted and hourly compensation rates.
The NeuroLOGIC request would provide four hours of professional development to district staff to bring new insight on how to focus on the caring of a child. Assistant Superintendent Dan McGarry said teachers have become weighed down with testing and other mandates and have lost sight on focusing on children.
“It’s not a curriculum, it’s a professional development opportunity and resource that teachers can go to; how can (they) work with students who are overreacting, or reacting in such a way that behavior is their language?” said McGarry. “There’s not a manual or a script, it’s training we would like to have people go through to understand how to work with students in that situation.”
One resident asked exactly how many of the 12,200 district students would benefit from this. Various administrators said all of them would.
“Some board asked of us, and members have the superintendent, that they would like traumainformed schools, and we are taking that seriously,” said Dan McGarry. “There is a cost, there’s no question about it.”
Included in its almost $200,000 price tag is the use of two specialists who would visit Upper Darby High School for the entire school year to help around 30 students.
Board President Rachel Mitchell said the district would be remiss to not address trauma-based issues, with board member and former district teacher Judy Gentile advocating for NeuroLOGIC.
“There seems to be a bottom line where trauma is a symptom and we don’t have anything in the district at that level (to help),” said Gentile, referring to recent school shooting events around the country and the lives lost at the hands of people needing more traumainformed care. She said there is no price tag to losing lives in schools.
“We have to start somewhere, we have to begin. Somewhere, we have to start addressing the bottom line,” Gentile added.
NeuroLOGIC is an initiative by North Wales-based Lakeside, a specialized organization that focuses on “brain-based, traumainformed approach to serving young people.” The district has three students enrolled at Lakeside according to a student enrollment report released earlier this month.
A third request to the board would include the possibility of bumping up their five-year lease purchasing power for technology and equipment incentives from $1.8 million to $2.4 million. This would include $1.5 million to purchase 2,700 Google Chromebooks, $172,000 in security costs and an estimated $100,000 cost to put GPS tracking software on every district school bus and van. Grant said the district has held at the $1.8 million option in the past so an increase of $2.4 million would add $125,000 in annual costs to the district.
A fourth request was made by Grant to ask for a tax increase of .5 percent to boost the district’s capital reserve funds by $500,000 to supplement that account which is projected to have a balance of $630,000 at the end of the current fiscal year on June 30. An increase in this account would help lower-cost capital improvement projects for the next year including playgrounds at Hillcrest and Highland Park elementary schools and various concrete jobs throughout the district.
Any use of fund balance or tax rate increase was not determined in the draft budget. Additionally, there were many uncertainties with this draft budget include funding amounts from the state and federal governments, federal grant awards and school safety money.
“This evening is a perfect example of everything we just talked about,” said Grant. “You’re bringing about initiatives to be able to address school safety and the mental welfare of children, but the discussion on funding it … we can’t move (on it).”
Grant added the only thing that was certain in the budget is that the board had agreed to not raise taxes over its Act 1 index of 3.4 percent. Should the board decide to raise taxes to that level it would raise approximately $3.2 million in additional revenue.
Mitchell said it’s a shame that the district has to operate in this manner because of underfunding from the state and that they can’t sustain it anymore.
“I don’t know how much longer we can allow the state Legislature to not value public education,” said Mitchell.
With affirmation that the budget can still be shifted right up until its scheduled adoption on June 19, the board pushed through the various requests presented to them to be incorporated into the proposed final budget presentation on May 16 and its subsequent adoption by the board on May 22. One caveat that was asked by the board was a prioritized list of the staffing requests and the expenditure reflection on the proposed final budget.