Harrisburg Schools Budget Won’t Be Pretty, Officials Say (PA)
May 10, 2010
It’s high-anxiety time in the Harrisburg School District.
District officials must unveil a proposed budget this month for 2010-11 that, ac cording to some people, will be stained with red ink flowing from millions of dollars of deficit spending in recent years.
It could make this budget a fiscal time bomb that is likely to result in program cuts, building closures and layoffs.
There’s good reason for the nervousness, according to Harrisburg Mayor Linda Thompson, who said the district has a two-year budget hole that she places at $22 million.
“When you are dealing with a $22 million deficit, everything must be on the table,” Thompson said in an interview last week, rattling off a list that included layoffs, cancellation of contracts with outside vendors and mothballing of schools. Thompson has oversight of district affairs in accord with the state’s Education Empowerment Act at least through June 30.
But with silence from most school officials about the emerging plan, rumors have mostly filled the void.
“We are preparing for the possibility of layoffs, and I think it’s going to be in a wide range of areas,” said Rich Askey, president of the Harrisburg Education Association, the union representing some 700 classroom teachers.
Last week, some students and staffers at the William Penn campus — home to about 600 pupils in the district’s vocational training programs and alternative education classes — seemed convinced that their building will be closed.
When Harrisburg Area Community College officials confirmed Friday the district has initiated discussions about the college hosting the vo-tech programs, district officials quickly replied that nothing about their budget proposal has been finalized.
<br /> ;
Meanwhile, other constituencies are worried about pre-kindergarten programs for 3- and 4-year-olds. While credited with raising reading and math scores in the early grades, the preschool program, launched in 2002, is often a budget target because it is not mandated — and therefore not paid for — by the state or federal governments.
One group that might be spared the worst of the coming debacle is the taxpayers. In February, the school board passed a resolution declaring it will keep any property tax increases this year within the inflationary index set by state law.
That decision should limit any increase in taxes in the city to 2.9 percent. But that doesn’t make the budget-balancing act any easier.
“[School administrators are] going through that budget with a fine-tooth comb, and they’ve got to make some hard-core decisions,” Thompson said. “There’s not going to be any escape.”
The root of the district’s ills is complex.
Thompson blames former Superintendent Gerald Kohn, whom she accuses of budgeting unrealistically on the revenue side, a move she says caught up with Harrisburg in the last two years when state payments to the district dried up.
“Kohn played a Russian roulette game,” Thompson said of the superintendent whose contract she ordered to be rescinded in March. “He always thought he was going to get bailed out by the state.”
In fact, state aid to the district has been millions less than budgeted in the last several years, as special appropriations won by Rep. Ron Buxton and Sen. Jeff Piccola for the district’s alternative education program dwindled in the face of the state’s bu dget woes.
Separately, extra resources for the state’s empowerment districts were cut back, Buxton noted.
One ray of hope for Harrisburg this year is the possibility of additional federal funding through School Improvement Grants in the economic stimulus package.
With district leaders doing all of their work behind closed doors — Board of Control Chairman Gloria Martin-Roberts has explained that as not wanting to cause hysteria in the city over preliminary discussions — it’s hard to know how drastic the cuts in the forthcoming budget proposal might be.
Some members have begun to outline their priorities. Board of Control member Corky Goldstein said Friday that he would look first to thin the ranks of administrators.
With 47 administrators, Harrisburg has a larger senior management corps than any other midstate school district. Its ratio of 1 administrator to 176 pupils is far lower than any of the other area districts with more than 5,000 students, and average pay of $95,794 ranks third of 30 Harrisburg-area districts.
“They’re hard decisions to make,” Goldstein said of layoffs. “But cutting out programming that’s going to better able our kids to graduate and then to compete in the world, that would affect a lot more people” than making three managers take on the workload of a fourth.
In an early sign of the austerity, the district has issued letters to parents of students who need to complete course work over the summer stating that courses will not be offered if class registrations don’t hit at least 25 students.
Roy Christ, a member of both the board of control and the elected school board, said other ideas that have been thrown on the table include breaking the district’s $40,000-a-month lease for administrative offices on North Front Street and bringing that back in-house.
“No idea is too crazy or too out-of-bounds right now,” said Christ. “But it’s not going to be a pleasant experience.”