Mar 10, 2015 By David Singer 3 min read

Upper St. Clair Township officials are asking the school district to pay an additional $38,738 to renew their lease of the administrative office building, according to financial director Frosina Cordisco. That would bring rent up to nearly $100,000 through 2019.

No action was taken on the discussion item at the March 9 committee meeting, but several board members said they were cautious about voting in the future about such a large increase.

“We’re going to have to cut somewhere soon, and we need to be looking at things like this instead of cutting to education services,” said board member Amy Billerbeck.

In other business, the board voted unanimously to hire Sweet, Stevens, Katz and Williams, LLP, an education law firm based in New Britain, Pa., to represent the district in an appeals case for ACCESS, the state program used to obtain funding for health-related services for special education students.

District solicitor Robert Prorok had been representing Upper St. Clair in the case. As many other districts are also joining the appeal, Prorok advised the board to hire special counsel because $250,000 in reimbursements is at stake for the district. Prorok said there are “about 125 districts” involved in the joint appeal that would cost more than $500,000 for all districts involved, and that breakdown of services would be revealed at future meetings. The district is looking to make up all the cash it can before approving a final budget in June.

For now, Upper St. Clair school officials are sticking to their $73,169,752 preliminary operating budget for the 2015-16 school year, betting that at least some portion of Governor Tom Wolf’s budget makes it past GOP hurdles in the state legislature.

“Did you get the letter that Republican leadership sent out?” asked school board member Harry Kunselman.

Superintendent Dr. Patrick O’Toole said he didn’t receive one of the letters sent to school officials, but was aware its message was not to count on new school funding.

Despite that, O’Toole presented the preliminary budget showing highlights that would include a $400 million increase in the state’s basic education funding; $100 million potentially added to special education; $160 million in potential savings due to uniform tuition in cyber charters that would be set at nearly $6,000; and nearly $3.8 billion in property tax relief – if the ideal version of Governor Wolf’s budget package passes.

The administration’s presentation to the board also noted the district would be hopeful for $1.3 billion in statewide reductions for pensions over five years due to proposed limits on investment manager fees, and $185 million in revenues from a privatized liquor system.

Even if those revenues don’t come through, O’Toole noted there was a 4.4 percent increase in local revenues due to the proposed increased millage rate of .8398, and that there was more real estate assessed at higher values, as well as new construction and a three percent growth in the earned income tax.

“These numbers are better than what we had with what we call the Act 1 budget (that was required to be submitted by Feb. 18), so we’re going to try to stay as close to these numbers as we can as we move toward May,” O’Toole said.

One of the new expenses in 2015-16 is a new iPad initiative that gets a tablet computer into the hands of every fifth, sixth and seventh grade student at a cost of $780,000.