Gateway School District raises taxes, cuts programs and teachers to balance budget

Citing financial uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the Gateway School District Board of Directors raised property taxes and cut programs and teacher positions in order to balance next year’s budget.

The school board raised the property tax rate from 19.87 to 20.17 mills, an increase of 1.5%. The tax hike is expected to generate around $672,000 in revenue.

The $75.8 million budget, which passed with a 6-3 vote on June 30, reflects slightly less spending from last year, according to business Manager Paul Schott. Regardless, the school district filled the $1 million shortfall by hiking property taxes, using $416,000 of unassigned fund balance money, freezing wages, curtailing programs and cutting teacher positions, and suspending district capital projects.

The district furloughed two teachers, one of them being part-time, and did not renew five long-term substitute teacher positions. The programs that were curtailed included Latin and German language courses. A high school family and consumer science class was changed to an elective, allowing the district to eliminate one of the program’s teachers.

The district also cut six support staff members, and eliminated 24 supplemental positions in academics and athletics, according to its personnel agenda.

“We all struggled with this budget for months,” board President Mary Beth Cirucci said. “My perspective was, we need to try to share the load of this pandemic … there’s not a lot of data on how to predict how this is going to impact our budget.”

She said the board and administration tried to take an educated guess on how best to balance the budget and share the load among taxpayers, teachers and staff.

Board member Scott Gallagher took issue with raising property taxes. He advocated for using more money out of the fund balance instead of a property tax increase to lessen the blow for people who are out of work. Cirucci countered that using fund balance monies is not sound business practice. She said the district may need the money, which was an estimated $8 million in June, for emergencies next year.

“We can agree to disagree. You don’t want to raise taxes, you want to take all the money from fund balance. I don’t want to take all the money from fund balance because I feel we may have emergencies and I know that it will affect our budget next year,” Cirucci said.

The last time Gateway raised property taxes was in 2018, when the district’s millage rate increased by half a mill. This year’s millage rate, 20.17, means the median Monroeville property, valued at $108,700, will be taxed around $32 more annually, and the median Pitcairn property, valued at $34,600, will be taxed around $10 more.