The Shaler Area School Board has approved a budget without a tax increase for the coming school year, but its real work may be just beginning.
The board is expected to discuss a revised scope of work at the district’s middle school during a buildings and grounds committee meeting in August. Work contemplated for the school has included roof repairs, HVAC and relocating its office.
And some school directors say the board needs to start talking about “right-sizing” the district, which could include moving where certain grades are housed and the potential closing of schools, such as Shaler Area Elementary and Reserve Primary.
At the upcoming committee meeting, beginning at 6 p.m. Aug. 20, School Director Dorothy Petrancosta said she will want to discuss emptying the elementary school by moving sixth grade to the middle school, which now houses seventh and eighth grades, and fourth and fifth grades into the district’s K-3 primary centers.
“If we do not push, I do not think we are going to see it. I want to see that,” she said. “My goal would be to have that ready for the ’26-’27 school year.
“I do not know whether that is at all reasonable, and I will respect if you tell me it’s not. But I at least want to be able to go into budgeting for the next year knowing that it’s on its way.”
Without a property tax increase, the district’s $102.2 million budget for the 2025-26 school year is balanced using about $2.6 million from the district’s fund balance. That draws it down from about $8.4 million at the start of the school year to $5.8 million at the end.
Petrancosta was the only one of the nine board members to vote against the budget at a special meeting Wednesday, June 25.
“We need lead time. No one in this room, no one sitting in these seats can say that we will be able to do anything with these buildings … without financing,” Petrancosta said. “We just passed a budget that is going to take a hit to our finance rate. We just passed a budget that is going to increase any rate of borrowing that we are about to see. We need to find savings.”
But Reserve resident Ken Vybiral, a candidate for school board representing Region 1 in this November’s election, urged the board to not look for savings by closing Reserve Primary.
“That school is vital to that township,” he said. “Yes, Reserve Township is a small community. It’s an older community. We don’t have a lot of growth. One of the primary reasons why we do get young couples and families that come into that community is because of that school.”
After Vybiral noted that Reserve Primary has a small population with small class sizes, Petrancosta said Shaler Area should redistrict and fill the school to capacity, giving Reserve the 25 students per class that the other schools have.
“Be careful what you ask for, you may get it,” she said. “What you’re getting costs us twice as much to educate one student coming out of Reserve as every other. It’s not fair.
“We’re either going to have to change how we spend money and spend twice as much money on every primary school student in this district, or we equalize it the other way and we fill the school.”
Board member James Burn Jr. said preliminary schematics for that concept should be developed for consideration among other options in August.
The district “can’t just sit in neutral,” Burn said.
“No, we can’t,” Petrancosta said. “Either we don’t have it and we save the money that way, or we fill it and save the money the other way. It works — sixth grade up here, K through 5, fill the school.”
Following the board’s meeting, board President James Tunstall said he agrees with “right-sizing” the district. He also hopes the district will be able to outperform the budget and not spend as much as is projected from its fund balance.
Citing comments from residents attending board meetings, a budget with no tax increase is what residents wanted, Tunstall said.
“We’re trying to do the best for the community,” he said. “It was the right thing to do.”
But he, along with board member April Kwiatkowski, said they voted to approve the budget primarily to support the administration and described the district’s finances as “unsustainable.”
A February 2023 Commonwealth Court ruling that the current school funding scheme is unconstitutional factors into their thoughts.
Featured Local Businesses
“Not increasing taxes and not giving more money to this district to support these students regardless of whether it’s less students is not sustainable,” Kwiatkowski said. “Taking money away from this district is taking programs and opportunities away from these children who might not have it otherwise.
“If you want to make a difference, it’s not coming here and complaining about the taxes going up. It’s calling their legislators and talking to them about the illegal funding formula that allows for the dollars to come into these districts … to be based on the values of the properties in their community.
“It was found to be illegal. It needs to be changed. It’s unsustainable.”
Calling the situation frustrating, Burn said a court order compelling the state government to act may be necessary.
“I think (such an) action on behalf of every single school district in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania to force the General Assembly in Harrisburg to fix this might be the only remedy for this ongoing problem,” he said.