Parkland Faces Nearly $1 Million Funding Gap Under Proposed State Budget

The Parkland School District faces a nearly $1 million funding gap for the 2011-2012 school year under Gov. Tom Corbett's proposed state budget, according to the district’s director of business administration.

At Tuesday night's school board meeting, John Vignone said school officials had anticipated cuts to basic education funding and other areas, but were blind-sided by other cuts, including in reimbursements for Parkland employees' social security taxes.

Corbett also plans to stop reimbursing , as well as other districts in the state, for a portion of their charter-school costs.

But the financial blow to the Parkland School District could have been worse, Vignone told the board, if school officials had not anticipated the loss of basic education funding and federal stimulus money in preparing the district's preliminary budget, passed in February.  He said the budget gap would have been $1.9 million.

"The more you look at it, the worse it gets," Vignone said of the proposed state budget. "It is an on-going review process."

Superintendent Louise E. Donohue said the district's budgeting process continues to be "extremely challenging."  Officials had been examining ways to reduce the proposed tax hike for next year, Donohue said, and now, "we have even more work to do."

Vignone said some of the governor's proposals would require legislative change and approval, so it is uncertain whether the cuts will go through. Donohue said she hoped for modifications to the proposed state budget to ease the financial impact on the district.

Parkland would lose $241,473 in charter school reimbursements and $390, 421 in Pennsylvania Accountability grants, which are used to pay for some staffing and mandated professional development programs for teachers. The district would also face a funding gap of $722,772 in social security reimbursements.

"We do our best to stay on top of information," Donohue said. "No one anticipated this."

While basic education funding would be reduced to pre 2008-2009 levels, district officials had anticipated cuts, budgeting for $6,029,406 in funding. The district would receive $369,729 more than that for the 2011-2012 school year.

The district also budgeted $3,261,362 in special education funding, but would receive $15,541 more than that for next year under the proposed state budget.