USC school board honors students and staff
The Upper St. Clair School Board at its regular meeting highlighted some of the awards recently garnered by the district’s students and staff.
Kevin Chen, a Carson Scholar; Harvey Kane, a long jump winner at the Track & Field Association Indoor State Championship; Curt Leonard, the President’s Volunteer Service Award winner; and Jaron Maine, a national silver medalist Scholastic Art and Writing Awards were honored during the board’s April 24 meeting.
The high school Dance Team also was recognized for its first-place finish at Jamfest Dance Super Nationals, and the high school Forensics Team was recognized for winning the State Speech League Championship. The high swim team accomplishments at WPIAL and state championships were also noted.
The board also recognized Boyce Middle School and Fort Couch Middle School for being each being re-designated as a Donald Eichhorn School to Watch.
In other business, school Superintendent Patrick O’Toole said the technology budget and other updates to the 2017-18 budget would be presented at the board’s May 8 meeting.
The latest draft of the district’s proposed final budget for the 2017-18 school year, presented at the board’s April 17 meeting, showed a shortfall of $79,971, even with a 0.8172-mill increase. The increase would raise the total millage to 25.156, which would cost a property owner with a home assessed at $200,000 an additional $163 per year.
District officials are in the process of continuing to review the budget to reduce the projected deficit.
Upper St. Clair’s proposed budget is expected to be adopted May 15. There will be a budget presentation on June 5, and the board will vote to adopt the final budget June 20.
Also during the meeting, the board approved the bid award of seven, 78-passenger school buses to Wolfington Body Co., Inc., at a cost of $86,720 per bus. Also approved was a seven-year lease for the school busses with PNC, with an interest rate of not more than 2.23 percent and a total cost of not more than $607,040.