As part of Act 1 legislative requirements, a Preliminary General Fund Budget for the 2012-13 school year in the amount of $138,480,273 was approved by the Parkland Board of School Directors during the regularly scheduled Board meeting on Tuesday, January 24, 2012.
The Preliminary Budget represents an increase of .19% over last year’s budget and equates to 1.97 mills from the current rate of 39.73 mills to 41.70 mills. While this represents a 4.96% tax increase, the budget to budget increase is only .19%. Declining revenues, particularly commercial/industrial real estate assessment appeals (that have amounted to a $4M loss over the past 3 years) is the main driver of the budget gap along with low interest earnings on District investments.
Some ways that the district plans to balance the budget the 2012-13 school year include the following:
- Planned wage freeze for teacher’s union (administrators took a wage freeze in 2011-12 school year)
- Personnel reductions, including the elimination of administrators
- Elimination of the Blake Shuttle space project
- Summer School tuition increases coupled with more online instruction
- Library book purchase reductions
- Fewer transportation runs and no purchase of new buses
- Spending freeze enacted February 1, 2012
- Reduction of Professional Development opportunities for staff
- Cuts in athletics, transportation, food services, equipment, and supplies budgets.
Also approved this evening was permission for Parkland to file for “exceptions” designed by the State to help districts pay for costs outside of their control. If approved, the exceptions will allow Parkland to raise taxes above the state mandated Act 1 Index of 1.7%. Parkland plans to file for exceptions related to escalating special education costs and fixed distributions to the Pennsylvania State Employee Retirement System – both mandated by the state. Because the state has yet to release the formulas that will be used to project what amount of money the exceptions process will allow the District to collect, it creates yet another uncertainty in the overall budget planning process. However, with approval of exceptions, the District estimates that it can raise taxes up to approximately 3.83% with School Board approval in June.
Superintendent Richard T. Sniscak noted, “This is a starting point for a Preliminary Budget at a time when so many unknowns exist. The state budget, and thus an idea of how much will be appropriated to public schools, has not yet been released. Even as we factor in a teacher’s union wage freeze, predict staff cuts, and project benefit reductions along with the other items noted above, we are still finding it difficult to balance our budget under the required cap and want to note that it is very possible that our budget for next year will be less than our current budget in order to stay within a 3.83% tax increase. We could not, by law, pass this budget in June as we are only permitted to increase taxes by the Act 1 index assigned to Parkland plus any approved exceptions. Therefore, the administration and the Board will continue to work to bring forward the lowest responsible tax increase in June while maintaining quality educational programming for all PSD students.”
The following list highlights efforts made within the past 12 to 15 months that realized additional savings for Parkland community members.
- Parkland saved $2.6M when it eliminated 60 positions from its employee workforce in 2011 (administrative, professional and support) which equated to gross savings of approximately $2.6 million.
- Parkland administrators took a pay freeze in 2011-12 to achieve additional savings of $250,000.
- A $400,000 petroleum savings was achieved over the past several years when Parkland broke away from consortium purchasing and partnered with Whitehall-Coplay School District to purchase petroleum on the NYMEX.
- A $914,400 reduction in electric utility costs was realized in 2010 and 2011 due to the purchasing of electricity in a competitive manner.
- Parkland Reaped $300,000 in Energy Savings from ClearChoice Energy for participating in the region’s PJM Demand Response Program that mandates that the district curtail power usage between June 1 and September 30 in the event the grid would need to reduce the amount of electricity for distribution.
- Parkland School District won the “Best Green School District” award from the Lehigh Valley Branch of the Delaware Valley Green Building Council (DVGBC) which honored green projects, organizations, and individuals in five categories for their contribution to sustainability and green design.
- Parkland School District garnered a 50% reduction in overall costs for technology over the past few years while maintaining and extending the district’s technology infrastructure. The use of a product called “nComputing” has reduced the number of central processing units (CPU’s) necessary to support high-quality instruction. The technology was first piloted during the 2009-10 school year, but now is used in all buildings on more than 1,000 machines which saved us approximately $550,000 as well as reduced future replacement costs.
- Parkland High School will connect to a natural gas pipeline as a project is underway that will allow UGI to extend and connect an existing natural gas pipeline to Parkland High School. After extensive safety and cost analysis conducted by both UGI and district-hired engineers, it was deemed by both parties that the project will pay for itself within a year of installation and yield utility savings for years to come.
- Parkland realized $1.2 M in savings in September of 2011 when the District effectuated a traditional bond refinancing to save the school district and its’ taxpayers $1,246,432. It plans to save another $350,000 through a similar measure this February.
As of the current school year, Parkland’s millage remains the lowest in Lehigh County when compared with 8 neighboring school districts.
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