For months, the State College Area school board has known:
Budgeting for the 2011-2012 school year was going to be an arduous task.
Estimates had projected a likely shortfall of $2 million to $3 million between expenses and revenue. And that’s on top of the $3.4 million that the board cut from expenses for the current school year, largely through attrition.
Now that Gov. Tom Corbett has released his proposed state budget, though, the State College board is facing an even more dire fiscal forecast.
Board members are expected to hear specifics at their Monday-night meeting. Preliminarily, board Vice President Jim Pawelczyk said, the projected revenue shortfall now may end up closer to $5 million to $8 million.
Tentatively, expenses for the next school year were set earlier at $118 million. That almost certainly will change as the board works toward a finalized budget over the next few months.
‘At this point, everything needs to be on the table in terms of what the district considers to achieve a balanced budget,’ Pawelczyk told StateCollege.com. ‘The board has been very adamant about the fact that (we) do not want to use one-time approaches’ and fixes. …
‘If we’re going to achieve savings in the district,’ he said, ‘it needs to be savings we can achieve permanently so that revenues and expenses match.’
Corbett’s proposed budget would shave about $1 billion from state general-education support across Pennsylvania. Education should not be ‘recession-proof,’ and teachers should be willing to accept a one-year pay freeze as the state works through budget difficulties, Corbett has argued.
Three key school-oriented unions in State College are due to complete new contracts with the district this year, but specifics of their contract negotiations have not been disclosed publicly. More than 70 percent of the district’s revenue is committed to personnel expenses.
‘What you want to try to do is to keep impacts on the classroom to a bare minimum,’ Pawelczyk said of budget cuts.
He acknowledged that layoffs are ‘a distinct possibility’ for the coming school year. The board was able to avoid such measures last year.
But this time around, the school district expects that state and federal support together may dip by nearly $4 million.
That reduction is expected to hit several elements of the school budget, from targeted reimbursements to block grants. For instance, Corbett has proposed eliminating the 30 percent state-reimbursement payments to school districts for charter-school expenses.
The state’s Accountability Block Grants that promote full-day kindergarten also may go away, leaving a bigger burden on the local tax base.
Still, state law limits just how much the school board may raise taxes without putting a budget referendum on the ballot. For the State College school board, that limit appears to be in the five percent range for 2011-2012.
Add in some unavoidable cost increases — such as those for employee health care — and the board’s budgetary options appear somewhat limited. Administrators’ ideas for cost controls are due before the board starting Monday night.
‘They say the governor’s budget is a statement of values. And it’s clear from this (proposed state) budget that he doesn’t value public education very highly,’ said State College Area school-board member Jim Leous.
He said the idea that Pennsylvania should close its immediate budget deficit solely through cost cuts — and without any fee or tax increases — represents short-term thinking.
‘It’s short-term decision-making, taking care of this year instead of looking down the road,’ Leous said. ‘ … Really, what we’re doing is eating our seed corn in Pennsylvania.’
Similarly, Pawelczyk said he thinks the Corbett budget marks a philosophical shift in Harrisburg’s approach to funding public education.
Educators have said they expect safety-net-type public programs to be reduced as core educational functions remain.
‘The deep take-home message in this budget is that … all those problems (in education) aren’t going to be solved in Harrisburg; they’re not going to be solved at the board table. They’re going to be solved at the kitchen table,’ Pawelczyk said, emphasizing the role of family in education.
The Monday school-board meeting is scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m. in the district administration building, 131 W. Nittany Ave., State College. It will be open to the public.
Earlier coverage
