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The state of the budget is less clear than usual this year, but the needs are greater.
Warren County School District has to submit its final budget in one month.
At Monday's meeting of the school board's finance committee, Director of Business Services Jim Grosch suggested a two-mill tax increase that would bring the district $855,384 to help it through what is expected to be another difficult year.
The proposed final budget presented on Monday showed a projected $1,290,000 deficit with Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSR) dollars but without a tax increase.
The board asked Grosch to come back in June with a zero-increase baseline, with information breaking down revenues and expenditures for other scenarios.
"It's difficult for us to raise taxes on homeowners and businesses in the community in any year," board member Arthur Stewart said. "In a year… that people have gone through all the hardship that they have gone through with COVID… it's particularly difficult."
He said the district is looking at a closing fund balance of $18 million without the increase. "Can you ask the community in the year of COVID to suffer a tax increase in the name of that fund balance?" he asked.
Over the span of four years, that fund balance would disappear, according to Grosch's projections, and the district would be in the red at the end of the 2024-2025 school year.
Revenues are in question.
State funding levels are not clear. The federal ESSR dollars are unclear. Grosch has $3,941,954 in ESSR on the revenue side of the budget for this year and expects to see about $14 million over the next two school years, but information about how those dollars may be spent and whether or not they will simply be pulled out of one pocket and put into another is unclear.
Administrators are concerned about providing for students who have suffered "learning loss" due to being away from school and possibly having less-than-adequate services for working from home.
"We hear that there's money our there to address the learning loss and they're reeling it back in a little bit," he said.
The state has started providing, and could mandate, ways school districts can address learning loss, but are not proposing any additional funding.
"You guys have ESSR, use that" seems to be the answer, Superintendent Amy Stewart said.
That learning loss has put the district in the position of needing to retain more teachers and expand educational offerings.
What is clear is that the district is in a position of needing to beef up its educational offering.
"The buck stops with us in terms of the responsibility to the students who have been stuck in a situation where they have less than ideal conditions," Arthur Stewart said. "Kids have been hurt."
In order to help counteract that loss, the administrators are proposing keeping 12 teaching positions and six custodial positions in the budget that would typically be cut through attrition. Retaining those positions adds up to about $1,000,000.
The 12 teaching positions are only the beginning, Amy Stewart said. "That 12 is step one… 12 teachers is not nearly enough. These are ones that we know that we want to get in place right away."
"We know that these kids need so much," she said. "We're still figuring out what kids need."
The educational needs brought on by COVID and learning loss are at odds with the district's enrollment trend.
"I sat here a month ago and saw a chart of projected enrollment throughout the county," board member Jeff Labesky said. "It looks like we're losing about 200 kids a year. WAHS is projected in 10 years to be graduating less than 100."
"Administration is proposing a two-mill increase on the tax payer who is also coming out of COVID," Labesky said. "We're going to ask them to foot a two-mill increase. It's just a band-aid on a big problem."
"We're going to tax ourselves right out of business," he said. "I look four years from now and I think, 'What's the point?' We're on a ship that's sinking and we're putting band-aids on it."
Arthur Stewart agreed. "For the long-term sake of our community, we can't just keep raising the millage forever and ever."
The district is being put in a difficult position by the nature of politics. "Washington doesn't want to raise your taxes because they want to get re-elected," board member Paul Mangione said. "Harrisburg doesn't want to raise your taxes because they want to get re-elected. They're building the model to push those tax increases to the lowest level that they can."
Board president Donna Zariczny pointed out that the structure of school boards' abilities to raise taxes - they are limited to a percent by the state each year unless the community approves a larger increase through a resolution - that not raising taxes this year is a limiting factor "every year from here on forward. From the standpoint of being fiscally responsible. We can never recoup what we don't gain this year."