The Harrisburg school board at tonight’s meeting.
Harrisburg homeowners likely will pay higher school taxes this year, thanks to a preliminary budget approved by the Harrisburg school board tonight.
Board directors voted 7-2 to levy a 3.6 percent tax increase, the district’s first since 2012.
Combined with the elimination of 50½ teaching, administrative and support positions, the additional tax revenue will reduce the district’s $9 million deficit to $4.7 million for the 2018-19 school year, Business Administrator Bilal Hasan said.
At tonight’s special board meeting, no members of the public protested the proposed tax hikes. But almost a dozen said that preserving the ranks of teachers, principals and support staff should be the district’s first priority.
Kayla Mini, a music teacher at Foose Elementary School, said that cutting teachers and support staff would exacerbate the district’s poor teacher retention rate.
“Thirty students in a classroom is not kind to me, my colleagues or administrators or to kids,” Mini said. “Why do we have such a high turnover? I guarantee it is because of unkind working conditions.”
District residents offered ideas for cost-cutting measures. Jayne Buchwach proposed a 5-percent pay cut for central administration staff, and Kia Hansard pointed to administrative positions that could be eliminated to increase efficiency.
Jody Barksdale, president of the Harrisburg Education Association, said the district should bid out current services to ensure it is getting the lowest rates on procurement.
The budget that the board approved tonight will eliminate 24 instructional staff, 14.5 administrators (including four school vice principals) and 11 sanitation workers, counselors and security personnel represented by the AFSCME union.
It will also set the district’s tax rate at 28.8 mills, an increase of 1.0008 mills from this year. With Harrisburg’s median home value of $42,800, the tax hike will cost the average city homeowner an additional $43 a year.
Long-term budget projections presented in April call for tax hikes of the same magnitude every year through 2021.
The board has until June 30 to submit a final budget to the state. Until then, the district’s business office will search for more cost-cutting measures, Hasan said.
When pressed by board President Judd Pittman, Hasan said that the business office could consider some of the proposals made by district residents.
However, Hasan said that it would be up to different bargaining units to volunteer to take pay cuts. He also emphasized that all positions in the district’s central administration office were the first to be considered for elimination.
Even so, the board could add one more administrative position before the budget is finalized. It voted 7-2 tonight to approve a resolution for the creation of a new assistant superintendent position.
That position is not currently included in the 2018-19 budget, Hasan said, but will be added following the board’s affirmative vote.
Board directors Carrie Fowler and Tyrell Spradley voted against the assistant superintendent motion. Fowler also dissented in the 7-2 budget vote, joined by board director Percel Eiland.
