{"id":5651,"date":"2025-10-17T11:16:05","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T11:16:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/5651\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T11:16:05","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T11:16:05","slug":"more-lehigh-valley-schools-will-withhold-charter-funds-during-state-budget-impasse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/5651\/","title":{"rendered":"More Lehigh Valley schools will withhold charter funds during state budget impasse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Northern Lehigh and Salisbury Township school districts have joined Bethlehem Area in withholding funds for charter schools in an attempt to share the pain of frozen state funding.<\/p>\n

Northern Lehigh\u2019s resolution<\/a>, passed Monday, is the most expansive, authorizing the district to temporarily withhold 100% of public charter school and public cyber charter school tuition invoices during the budget impasse.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they\u2019re not giving us money, it\u2019s kind of senseless for us to have to take money out of our pot to pay charter schools when we\u2019re not going to get money from the state,\u201d Northern Lehigh School Board President Mathias Green Jr. said at Monday\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere isn\u2019t a whole lot we can do to push back,\u201d Green added. \u201cMaybe that\u2019s one of the little minor things that we can do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Salisbury Township\u2019s resolution<\/a>, passed Wednesday, echoes the one Bethlehem Area voted upon on Sept. 22, <\/a>\u00a0withholding from each charter school payment the percentage of funding the district receives from the state.<\/p>\n

In Salisbury Township, that percentage is 21%. In Bethlehem Area, it\u2019s 30%.<\/p>\n

Northern Lehigh receives 21% of its revenue from state funds.<\/p>\n

All the resolutions are temporary measures.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis resolution simply ensures that charter schools share the impact of the state\u2019s inaction in the same proportion that our own district is experiencing,\u201d BASD Superintendent Jack Silva said at the Sept. 22 board meeting<\/a>. \u201cLet me be clear: this is a temporary measure. Once state funding is restored, full payments will resume and the charter schools will be made whole.\u201d<\/p>\n

Salisbury Township School Board President Joseph Gnall said districts are taking action as a message to the state to get its budget in line.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have hard and fast dates where we have to have ours. It\u2019s only fair,\u201d Gnall said. \u201cSo don\u2019t expect us to pick up the weight. And if anybody wants to talk about that from the state, you know where to find me.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other budget action, Easton Area School District Superintendent Tracy Piazza announced at Tuesday\u2019s school board committee meeting that district staff would need to prioritize their spending based on needs, rather than wants.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have asked our administration, and by default our teachers, to go into a spending curtailment,\u201d Piazza said.<\/p>\n

The district is asking for purchase orders to be approved at the executive team level and will suspend some after-school programs, Piazza said. After-school programs that are in partnership with community organizations or do not rely on federal or state funds will continue.<\/p>\n

With both federal and state funds frozen, the district is relying on local funds, Piazza said, adding that there is not a need to issue bonds to meet payroll or other obligations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also want to be proactive and make sure that we\u2019re setting aside some money in case that federal or state money never comes through and we have to use district funds for things that were earmarked to come out of federal or state funding,\u201d Piazza said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Northern Lehigh and Salisbury Township school districts have joined Bethlehem Area in withholding funds for charter schools in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5652,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,227,182,139,432],"class_list":{"0":"post-5651","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-education","12":"tag-local-news","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-top-stories-tmc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5651","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=5651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}