Harrisburg school board
The Harrisburg school board moved unanimously to adopt the district’s 2026-27 budget with a real estate tax rate hike Tuesday.
The $227.1 million budget comes with a 1.5% property tax increase, bringing the city’s mill rate to 31.871. This means an owner with a home with an assessed value (as opposed to market rate value) of $100,000 would pay $3,187 in annual school taxes.
More than two-thirds of the district’s budget comes from the state of Pennsylvania, which has yet to pass its own budget, despite a June 30 deadline. This has forced the district to predict what it will receive from the state. The district was able to sufficiently do this last year when the state failed to pass its budget until November. Smaller chunks of district revenue come from local and federal sources.
Board members also declined, in a 1-5 vote Tuesday, to close an Allison Hill-based office building turned middle school, Rowland Academy. Board member Jaime Johnsen was the only member to vote for the closure of the school.
Regardless of the vote, Rowland will not be staffed and will hold no students for the 2026-27 school year. It will, however, keep its state-registered building number.
This will allow it to be easily used in the future, if the district decides to move away from its current plan to consolidate most of its middle school students at the Uptown-based Camp Curtin.
“We’re committed to make a change for this fall. Should we not be pleased with the change, there could be the opportunity to revert back to the building,” said board member Annie Hughes.
Board member Annie Hughes
Approved in 2023, under a past superintendent, the middle school consolidation plan has long had skeptics, including board member Brian Carter, who noted that he initially voted against it.
Carter voted Tuesday against Rowland’s closure, reminding the full board that employees and community members had voiced concerns to the board about student behavior issues and large class sizes at the school earlier this month.
“I feel that the plug should have been pulled and we should not move forward with this decision,” Carter said of the consolidation, despite last week hearing a plan for how to streamline the effort from the incoming principal of the school.
Over the last three years, as Rowland stopped accepting lower grade levels, sending kids to Camp Curtin instead. According to the Department of Education, Camp Curtin enrolled 815 students for the 2025-2026 school year. All students that would have attended Rowland will go to Camp Curtin during the 2026-27 school year, as its last class of eighth graders graduated in June.
Several board members asked Superintendent Benjamin Henry to provide updates on how the new consolidation plan, put together by the building’s new principal, Ryan Jones, goes. Henry agreed to do so regularly, even going as far to say the board could add completion of such updates to his performance evaluations moving forward.
The board also approved the formal closure of a non-application, neighborhood school program at Marshall Math and Science Academy as well as merit-based salary increases for school administrators. Marshall Math and Science Academy, the application-based magnet school that houses roughly a fourth of the district’s middle school students, remains open.
Doug Thompson-Leader and Ellis Roy were absent from Tuesday’s meeting.
Board president Roslyn Copeland speaks
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