The Bethlehem Area School District\u2019s latest budget projections show the district is still facing an $8 million deficit. With a month to go before the proposed final budget is due, district staff are aiming to further cut expenses while avoiding layoffs and minimizing a planned tax hike.<\/p>\n
Salaries and benefits make up more than 60% of the district\u2019s budget, and Superintendent Jack Silva said he remains optimistic that the district will lose enough staff through attrition to avoid layoffs.<\/p>\n
During Monday\u2019s finance committee meeting, Interim Chief HR Officer Russell Giordano told the school board that he believes a majority of teachers who are planning to retire have already notified the district and that number is currently below the district\u2019s typical number of retirements, which he estimated at 30 annually.<\/p>\n
Chief Financial Officer Harry Aristakesian reported there are ongoing discussions about how to reduce teaching and support staff positions while maintaining the district\u2019s class size and support-staff-to-student ratios. This \u201cright sizing\u201d process aims to reduce the need to fill vacant positions by instead adjusting existing staff assignments to fit classroom enrollment numbers.<\/p>\n
There are also ongoing conversations about potential consolidation of district administrative positions, Aristakesian added.<\/p>\n
Aristakesian anticipates drawing on the district\u2019s unassigned fund balance to help close the deficit, but how much that drawdown will be remains undetermined.<\/p>\n
The district\u2019s budget calls for a 3.5% increase in the local property taxes that form the bulk of the district\u2019s revenue. In this budget cycle, state law allows the district to raise those taxes up to 4.2%, but Aristakesian said he aims to minimize that.\n<\/p>\n
Current economic conditions mean it is \u201cnot a good time to continue to push for that additional increase,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Aristakesian is currently budgeting for the district to receive half its promised adequacy funds \u2014 state money designed to make districts whole after a court ruling found Pennsylvania\u2019s school funding system unconstitutionally shortchanged students in districts that were not adequately funded. He is also projecting a drop in federal funding streams.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll be the first one to admit my crystal ball\u2019s a little foggy,\u201d Aristakesian said, noting that state and federal allocations are not guaranteed.<\/p>\n
Silva said Pennsylvania\u2019s superintendent association is expecting state funding levels to remain largely steady from last year\u2019s budget and does not anticipate a repeat of last year\u2019s prolonged state budget impasse that delayed the release of funds to districts.<\/p>\n
Aristakesian estimated the district suffered between $500,000 and $600,000 in lost interest due to that delay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Bethlehem Area School District\u2019s latest budget projections show the district is still facing an $8 million deficit.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172762,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,1994,227,182,139,434,28,432],"class_list":{"0":"post-172761","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-bethlehem","9":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","10":"tag-bethlehem-news","11":"tag-bethlehem-township","12":"tag-education","13":"tag-local-news","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-northampton-county","16":"tag-pennsylvania","17":"tag-top-stories-tmc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172761","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=172761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}