There were no big surprises as Parkland School Board directors were updated on the 2013-2014 budget during Tuesday night's workshop meeting until a graph depicting the district's fund balance over the next few years raised some red flags.
Director Robert Cohen noted the downward trend of the district's fund balance in contrast to costs for future commitments.
Business Administration Director John Vignone acknowledged Cohen's concerns and said the fund would be near zero by 2017-2018 if nothing changes.
He added, "We will have to find a less expensive way to deliver educational programs and continue to reduce expenditures - we’re working on it. I don't see how we can deliver education in its present mode and meet our future financial commitments."
But Superintendent Richard Sniscak said the graph, which shows a projected fund balance down from $18.8 million to $14.8 million in 2013-2014, is a worst-case scenario.
"If we have revenue growth in real estate and earned income taxes you may look at replenishing that loss…we don’t know yet," Sniscak said. "We have to keep tightening our belt and at the same time we have to prioritize what is important here."
He referenced last year's fund balance transfer of $3.3 million and reminded directors the district didn't have to use it all.
"We bit off so much of the apple the year before and it had us all very nervous but we didn’t spend near that amount of money," Sniscak said. "If we see positive real estate and mitigate our reassement losses we could be positioned better than we were a year ago."
It is not the school boards that grant tax assessment appeals to stressed out businesses, shifting taxes.. It is not the school board that has the authority to forgive taxes when due or paid late, even if they commiserate. It is not school boards who dream up mandates for "English as a second language" that require almost a million dollars in spending. Our grandparents do that? It is not the school board voting themselves huge pay increases; school board directors are unpaid and uncompensated volunteers who subject themselves to elections in order to be the unpaid bearers of bad news. It is not the school boards who passed a union political payoff law in Harrisburg making it illegal for districts to layoff teachers for purely economic reasons; they can eliminate entire programs, but they can't implement across the board cuts in personnel. PSD and other districts have been trying to deal with the bleeding via attrition/retirement, but the bleeding is faster every year. Feel free to wave a magic wand and fix this, election coming up, and there are seldom if ever more candidates than open slots for those thankless jobs, so no excuses. Our economies are flat on their back, that is the underlying cause of all this stress. Companies that survived the Great Depression are finding it impossible to survive the Obama Recovery...