Panther Valley seeks help cutting expenses
Panther Valley school board members are asking for the public to help cut expenses from its proposed 2019-20 budget.
The school board passed a preliminary budget Thursday night which would raise taxes by about 2 percent.
Board members have pledged to cut expenses before they vote on a final budget in June.
“We gotta pass, by law, a preliminary budget, so we can do a budget. If we don’t pass a preliminary, we’re in violation. It’s just to get us rolling,” said board President Wayne Gryzik.
The budget includes a 3.18-mill increase for Carbon County and a 2.77-mill for Coaldale.
The impoverished district already has the highest real estate tax millage of any district in the county.
The school board has raised taxes the last two years.
Heading into the 2019-20 the head of the school board’s finance committee says the district has a budget deficit and few ways to cut expenses.
“Right now, Panther Valley is so tight with money, we don’t know which way to turn, that we gotta cut. We’re actually looking at a 3-mill increase, because the money is not there,” said Gary Porembo.
Porembo said the finance committee recently had a two-hour meeting where they went through every line in the budget.
He asked members of the public to attend the next meeting at 6 p.m. today to share their ideas.
“We don’t know where to go, and we need the people’s help. We have the budget and finance meetings, no one shows up,” he said.
Porembo said the school board wants to replace the parking lot at Panther Valley Junior-Senior High School, and do maintenance on its buildings, but it has no money.
He’s particularly concerned with Gov. Tom Wolf’s proposal to raise the minimum salary for teachers to $45,000 per year, because there are several teachers in the district who make less than that.
“That’ll hurt Panther Valley drastically,” Porembo said.
Some of the budget is finalized. The board voted to approve the budgets for Lehigh Carbon Community College, Lehigh Intermediate Unit 21 and Carbon Career and Technical Institute.
CCTI officials were in attendance and said it’s the sixth year where they haven’t raised the amount that it takes from the schools who send it students.
“I’m from Lansford originally. I know your budget challenges, so we really appreciate that you put our budget up there and approved it,” said CCTI Administrator Dave Reinbold.
Comments
Raise taxes, it's easier than cutting pay for the bullies behind the pulpit.
We embrace home school. We're not the ones pushing the government school system.
There were three major aims of the Hitlers Youth Training program: character building , physical training, and training in the National Socialist world-view. Kind of sounds like what we have in our public school system.
One problem is, the public school's idea of good character, and that of we the parents may differ.