Every year the School District faces uncertain funding, with both the Borough and State finalizing their contributions after the budget cycle is completed. At Monday’s School Board meeting, board president Joe Arness said he’d like to see a more permanent solution.
Arness: “I’d like to see the borough simply dedicate or simply make the statement that they are going to support us to a mill rate and if it turns out they can’t give us that much because it exceeds the cap, that’s fine.”
The school boards current method of budget planning produces a budget set at an amount that can change after the budget has been passed, complicating the process.
Arness: “As the economy of the peninsula grows, as the assessed value of the peninsula grows, if you have a static mill rate, the amount of money that generates increases just by definition. If we could just establish that a portion of the mill rate that the borough charges goes to education, then we could do our own planning.”
The School board will meet on April 6th to finalize their budget.