Intelligencer Journal
Lancaster New Era
Updated Mar 08, 2011 22:38
By BRIAN WALLACE, Staff Writer
This year, Pennsylvania pumped an additional $7 million into local school district budgets through increased education subsidies.
Next year, those subsidies will plummet by more than $13 million and additional reductions in state funding will drain another $12 million or more from local school districts' coffers.
Despite the severity of those cuts, announced Tuesday by Gov. Tom Corbett, officials at Lancaster County schools said the reductions are about what they expected from the new governor.
That doesn't mean they're happy about them.
"We anticipated the worst-case scenario, and it came to fruition (Tuesday)," said Robert Hollister, Eastern Lancaster County School District superintendent. "We are sitting today where we figured we would be, and it's been painful for all."
Unlike many Lancaster County school districts, Elanco has already made difficult cuts to its operations, including contracting out its custodial staff and furloughing 15 teachers.
Under Corbett's spending plan, Elanco's basic education subsidy would drop by nearly $700,000, or about 8 percent, and the district would lose another $550,000 in state grants.
Similar state funding cuts will be felt by the 16 other school districts that enroll Lancaster County students. And all of them will be facing painful decisions in the coming months on which programs and personnel they can afford to keep.
Overall, state education subsidies for 2011-12 are down by an average 8 percent at county schools, and districts stand to lose millions more from the elimination of charter school reimbursements, grants for kindergarten and other early education programs and other state budget cuts.
Districts that rely heavily on state funding — School District of Lancaster and Columbia are the top two — will be hardest hit if the cuts remain in the budget when the Legislature approves the spending plan this summer.
SDL is facing a loss of nearly $8 million in state aid, including about $4 million in its education subsidy and $2.5 million in block grants that pay for full-day kindergarten programs for about 874 students.
The district also stands to lose about $925,000 in state support for tutoring services under the Education Assistance Program, which Corbett plans to eliminate.
About 1,300 students with academic difficulties are now tutored under the program.
Columbia faces a more than 9 percent reduction in its education subsidy and a drop of more than $1 million, or nearly 15 percent, in state funding.
Officials at the two districts declined to discuss specific areas where they'll have to cut expenditures next year, but they will have to consider reductions to education programs, possible furloughs and other cost-saving measures.
In a prepared statement, SDL superintendent Pedro Rivera said the district has been "preparing ourselves for the worst-case scenario based on what the governor has been hinting about over the last few months. Now we have to strategize around the unfortunate student-centered cuts that are proposed in the governor's budget."
Corbett's administration had warned that severe cuts were likely because $1 billion in federal stimulus funds that were used to bolster this year's education budget won't be available next year.
The state also is facing a deficit projected to reach $4 billion by year's end.
Aware of the possible cuts, most local school districts budgeted conservatively and were not taken aback by the numbers released Tuesday.
"We have been planning for a 12 percent decrease, and that's just about where we ended up," said Gerald Huesken, superintendent of Conestoga Valley School District.
Hempfield School District's projected state aid came in within about $80,000 of the district's estimates, superintendent Brenda Becker said.
"We have been conservative on our projections all along and on an approximately $100 million budget, we are happy it was not worse news," she said.
Elizabethtown Area School District also will receive about what it expected.
E-town budgeted for state funding at about the same level as in 2006-07, before federal stimulus funds were available, business manager George Longridge said.
Despite that conservative approach, the district faces a $3 million shortfall in its 2011-12 budget, even with a proposed tax increase of a little under 3 percent.
Now that it has an idea of what to expect from the state, Elizabethtown will focus on the tough task of deciding who, and what, to cut next year, superintendent Amy Slamp said.
"Like every district, we're looking at all areas for program cuts or eliminations and possible furloughs," she said. "We're looking all across the board."
bwallace@lnpnews.com
Read more: http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/360278#ixzz1G9lKUXuR
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