Seneca Valley: No Plans to Reopen District Budget

A revised budget from the state includes more funding for education than initially expected, but Seneca Valley officials have no plans to revisit the district's spending plan for the 2011-12 school year.

“At this point and time the board has not taken action to reopen the budget for any additional spending,” said Lynn Burtner, business director at .

At Monday’s meeting, school board member questioned if the district budget, which was , should be reopened in light of the additional money.

Earlier this year, Gov. Tom Corbett unveiled a $27.3 billion state budget with drastic cuts to basic education funding. State legislators, however, opted to approve a counterproposal that maintained Corbett’s bottom line but shifted money earmarked for public welfare programs to public education.

Under the revised budget, Burtner said the district has received $250,000 in Accountability Block Grant funding. The money must be used for activities permitted by the grant program, she said. In Seneca Valley’s case, the money would be used for literacy training.

“We’re happy to have received the $250,000 that we did get,” Burtner said. “It’s about one third of what we usually get.”

The district also is set to receive more than $460,000 in basic education funding. Burtner said the money would be used for general district operations.

School board President Robert Hill said he doesn’t believe the district should reopen the budget. If the additional funding were used to offset tax increases approved by officials for the 2011-12 school year, he said it would generate less than one mill in real estate taxes.

“I don’t think it’s practical nor cost-effective to go through reopening the budget,” he said.

In May, district officials approved the $94.5 million spending plan in a 5-4 vote. The plan increases real estate taxes by 5.6 mills, adds activity fees, and curtails a half-dozen district programs to address the the district faces in the next school year.

Hill said the new tax amount already is being collected.

“It just wasn’t practical to do anything differently, or cost-efficient,” he said. “The tax coupons already are printed and circulated.”

Burtner said the only reason to reopen the budget would be if the district wanted to increase its spending plan.

“At this point we are grateful for getting it, but we are not at this point planning to increase our spending in order to spend it,” she said. “It will just now be a revenue stream onto basic education funding.”

Scalamogna said the topic of reopening the budget may come up again at the next school board meeting set for Aug. 8.