ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2014 Allentown School Board on Thursday approved its $483.4 million budget for the upcoming fiscal year while holding the line on taxes for the third consecutive budget cycle.<\/p>\n
That keeps the district’s property tax rate at 22.6432 mills, meaning the owner of a home valued at $100,000 for tax purposes would pay an annual $2,264.32 in school property taxes.<\/p>\n
Some eligible Allentown residents will get a $1,013.35 reduction to their property taxes thanks to a state program funded through gambling revenue.<\/p>\n
Interim Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey Cuff said the district\u2019s fund balance total will be available next month after an audit.<\/p>\n
School directors also approved a resolution Thursday to transfer extra dollars from the fund balance into the district\u2019s capital reserve fund.<\/p>\n
The district will keep 8% of the current year\u2019s operating budget expenditures in its fund balance.<\/p>\n
According to a May presentation<\/a> from the district\u2019s financial consultant, ASD\u2019s fund balance was about $37.8 million.<\/p>\n According to the same presentation, ASD won\u2019t have to contend with a deficit in any budget cycle through 2027-28 if it gets additional adequacy supplement funding from the state, as was proposed in Gov. Josh Shapiro\u2019s spending plan.<\/p>\n Without the additional adequacy investment, the district could see a $2.5 million deficit by 2027-28, requiring a 1% property tax increase in each of the next two budget cycles, the consultant said.<\/p>\n Adequacy Supplement<\/p>\n Last year was the first time poor school districts across the state received an adequacy supplement to address their chronic underfunding.<\/p>\n The adequacy supplement money was the result of the state responding to a Commonwealth Court decision from a Republican judge who deemed Pennsylvania\u2019s education funding system unconstitutional.<\/p>\n The judge ruled that students who live in neighborhoods with low incomes and low property values were at a disadvantage. <\/p>\n The adequacy supplement was meant to help close that gap.<\/p>\n ASD received a $20.23 million adequacy supplement in the 2024-25 budget.<\/p>\n Those funds went toward hiring teachers and other staff, as well as toward buying new instructional materials, according to a fact sheet<\/a> from PA School Works<\/a>, a public education advocacy organization.<\/p>\n The funds also were spent on improving school facilities and covering mandated costs, such as charter school tuition.<\/p>\n That initial supplement amount becomes part of the overall package the district will get from the state moving forward.<\/p>\n With its guaranteed adequacy funding, ASD plans to spend on salaries and benefits for instructional coaches, reading specialists, parent liaisons, school psychologists and other positions.<\/p>\n With any increases to the adequacy funding, ASD would use those funds to hire more staff, improve its facilities, cover the costs of state-mandated training and implement a new student program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2014 Allentown School Board on Thursday approved its $483.4 million budget for the upcoming fiscal year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67195,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,55977,55976,8853,55978,55979,55975],"class_list":{"0":"post-117968","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-allentown","8":"tag-allentown","9":"tag-allentown-headlines","10":"tag-allentown-news","11":"tag-allentown-property-tax-rate","12":"tag-allentown-school-district-budget","13":"tag-allentown-school-district-news","14":"tag-allentown-school-property-taxes","15":"tag-allentown-schools-2025-26-budget","16":"tag-asd-budget"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}