Panther Valley plans to save by refinancing bonds

Panther Valley School District hopes to take advantage of historic low-interest rates to save money on its bonds.

The school board is working with PFM Financial Advisors to refinance two bonds from 2013 and 2017 at lower interest rates.

“We’re simply replacing those old higher rates with today’s lower rates. We’re not extending the debt at all, it’s still going to mature at exactly the same time it was scheduled to do so,” PFM’s Jamie Doyle said.

Doyle addressed the board Thursday night at its regular board meeting.

She said in August interest rates hit all-time lows — beating previous lows from summer 2016.

The board agreed to move forward with refinancing those bonds, but only if the total savings for the district is at least $50,000.

With current rates, Doyle said, the district would save about $82,000.

However they won’t know for sure until the bonds are put on the market in January.

The savings would come in the form of a lower debt service payment when the district passes its budget in the spring.

Assuming the savings is $82,000, the district would save $64,000 in 2019-20, and $13,000 in 2020-21.

Doyle said that since the savings is one-time only, she recommends the district use the money for a one-time purchase or put it toward capital expenses, rather than making it part of the budget.

In other business

• The board voted to hire three new teachers. It approved Tatiana Shellhammer as intermediate school emotional support teacher at a salary of $37,899; Jacob Wenzel as business education teacher at $37,899; and Karen Tharp as grade 7-9 emotional support teacher at $45,748.

• The board approved an agreement with Jennifer Alberti to provide contracted speech language pathology services at a rate of $62 per hour.

• The board rejected the sale of a property in Coaldale Borough which is currently on the repository list.