Finance committee now includes all board members

Assignments announced for other board committees

The newest members of the North Penn school board have already begun to make changes, including one meant to give the entire board a fuller picture of the district’s financial future.

New board President Tina Stoll announced the assignments for several school board committees on Monday night, and that the board’s finance committee will now be comprised of all nine members.

“It’s going to be a pretty difficult year next year, with the budget process, so we want to make sure we’re all as informed as we possibly could be,” Stoll said.

Over the summer the previous school board passed a $252 million budget with a 1.99 percent tax increase, which the board and district staff said was meant to make up a deficit originally estimated at $5 million and later narrowed slightly to roughly $4.5 million. During several months of talks on the budget, staff said the deficit was largely due to increasing expenses for salaries, benefits and pensions, with minimal growth to district revenues in recent years, and that the situation could get worse in future years.

Before five new board members being sworn in on Monday night, the budget and monthly financial reports had been reviewed by a finance committee comprised of only three of the nine board members, but Stoll announced shortly after being sworn in that the entire board will now be on that committee.

“That is a big change, and I thought it was really necessary, because I personally feel that you’ve got to know where the money is,” Stoll said.

“Without the money, there’s really not much to talk about anything else. We are all very interested in helping out with the budget,” she said.

Stoll also announced several other committee assignments, as follows:

Education, Community, and Policy: Christian Fusco, Jonathan Kassa, Terry Prykowski.

Montgomery County Intermediate Unit liaison: Fusco.

North Montco Technical Career Center liaisons: Mark Warren and Jenna Ott.

North Penn Educational Foundation: Ott.

Personnel and Negotiations: Ed Diasio, Warren, Stoll.

Safe Schools: Kassa, Prykowski, Ott.

Support Services: John Schilling, Kassa, Stoll.