Hatboro-Horsham Facing Budgetary Unknowns

School district taxpayers in Hatboro and Horsham will likely pay more in taxes come next year for fewer programming options and a reduced number of teachers. 

As districts throughout the state continue to see flat and declining state and federal revenues and increased operating costs, Hatboro-Horsham officials said during Monday’s school board meeting that ongoing district cuts are a grim reality.

Hatboro-Horsham School District officials said school taxes will likely need to increase. By how much, remains to be seen.

“Every year that we go through this process it’s a little bit more difficult, a little bit more time consuming,” Robert Reichert, the district’s director of business affairs of 15 years said in presenting a 2013-2014 budget update. “Some of those challenges are going to get more challenging year after year after year.”

And, even though actual numbers will not be worked up until December, Reichert told Patch after the meeting that “there will be a shortfall, that’s for sure,” in terms of next year’s budget. 

For starters, the state-mandated Act 1 index allows for up to a 1.7 percent tax increase, which amounts to just over $1 million more in property taxes. All but $74,510 of that would go toward the Pennsylvania School Employees’ Retirement System, Reichert said.

“It’s not going to provide everything that we need,” Reichert said of the potential tax boost.

On the federal level, Reichert said an across-the-board 8 percent funding cut would mean the district would receive $155,000 less than the current year.

The district has implemented more than 150 cost-saving initiatives to ensure that budgetary woes would not have a big impact on the district’s programming and core content, Reichert said. But, moving forward, “It’s going to become more and more difficult to protect those priorities.” 

Aging facilities, as well as long-range plans to build a new Hallowell Elementary School and a new middle school present an “added burden,” he said.

The bulk of the district’s costs are fixed, officials said. Of the current $86 million budget, Reichert said 76 percent accounts for staffing and benefit costs – both of which will undergo changes in the upcoming spending plan.

Superintendent Curtis Griffin said the district would continue to realign its resources and look at how to do things more efficiently. By budget adoption on June 17, Griffin said the board, like the last few years, would have “difficult decisions to make” in terms of furloughs, staffing cuts and program curtailment.

“It’s really going to be part of who school districts are as we look at a really tough economy every single year,” Griffin said. “This isn’t just Hatboro-Horsham. This is public education in Pennsylvania.”