Several months ago, The Tyrone Area School District had planned to fund the district\u2019s middle school expansion\/renovation project with cash.
\nNow, the district is considering a possible change and will address the issue at next Tuesday\u2019s Tyrone Area School District board meeting.
\n\u201cWe are considering possible funding options after realizing some conditions have changed over the last several months,\u201d said Tyrone Area School Superintendent Dr. William Miller.
\n\u201cWe could still go with cash,\u201d Miller told The Daily Herald.
\n\u201cAny change should have no impact on when the project would begin and could prove beneficial to the district,\u201d said Miller.
\n\u201cWe will have our financial management firm, Public Financial Management out of Harrisburg on hand at Tuesday\u2019s meeting to explain the financing options to the board,\u201d said Miller.
\nThe middle school project is expected to cost about $10 million, according to Dr. Miller.
\nSo far the project is still in the early stages with initial documents being sent to the Pennsylvania Department of Education as part of what is known as Plan Con A. In layman\u2019s terms, the first part of the construction plan for a school renovation project.
\nAn Act 34 public hearing is scheduled to held in early February. However, Dr. Miller explained the possible change in financing could cause the meeting to be delayed. He indicated such a delay would be only a couple weeks and as mentioned wouldn\u2019t delay the project.
\nThe hearings are held regarding school renovation project\u2019s when the project would increase a building size by a certain percentage.
\nAct 34 is also known as the \u2018Taj Mahal\u2019 act which was designed to prevent school districts from embarking on unnecessarily large expansions of their existing buildings.
\nIn an unrelated matter, Dr. Miller also spoke to The Daily Herald about Governor Rendell\u2019s education initiatives and the recent resolution to the state\u2019s budget problems.
\nMiller revealed the state has not yet released basic education funds due the district that were held up while budget issues were being resolved in Harrisburg.
\nTyrone\u2019s superintendent also feels Governor Rendell\u2019s education initiatives could \u201creally make a difference\u201d in the area of early childhood education.
\nMiller also cited a recent report which ranks Pennsylvania next to last in an evaluation of how fairly the 50 states treat their school districts while expressing his concern about education funding.
\nThe Associated Press reported earlier this week a national report card ranks Pennsylvania next to last in an evaluation of how fairly the 50 states treat their school districts.
\nThe AP article reported Pennsylvania got a D-minus in equity of education resources, just ahead of Illinois, which received a failing grade in an annual report from Education Weekly and the Pew Charitable Trusts. The grades were based in part on how much state governments contributed to local school districts, an area where Pennsylvania lingers toward the bottom.
\nAccording to the report titled, \u201cQuality Counts 2004: Count Me In,\u201d Pennsylvania school districts get an average of 39 percent of their budgets from the state. By comparison, Ohio school districts get 45.5 percent from the state; West Virginia, 66.9 percent; New Jersey, 41.8 percent; New York, 50.2 percent. Nebraska contributed 37 percent.
\nResearchers also looked at how districts are funded \u2014 by property taxes, a guaranteed tax base, flat grants, full state funding or a combination. The report noted that \u201cwealthier districts (in Pennsylvania) tend to receive significantly more state and local revenue than property-poor ones do.\u201d
\nGov. Ed Rendell has been campaigning to change how the state funds school districts. In April, Rendell proposed that the state take on 50 percent of local school funding and enact a method to reduce local property taxes.
\nHowever, a battle ensued in the Legislature and the state passed a budget with no percentage increases in state funding for local districts and no change in the property-tax system.
\nEducation reform groups blame both the state Legislature and the previous administration of Govs. Tom Ridge and Mark Schweiker for not using budget surpluses on education.
\n\u201cWe can now write the book on the Ridge-Schweiker years,\u201d said Tim Potts, director of the Pennsylvania School Reform Network.
\nDonna Cooper, Rendell\u2019s education policy director, said the current system relies too heavily on property taxes.
\n\u201cPennsylvania has a long way to go to bring greater equity to its school funding system,\u201d Cooper said.
\nLegislators are expected to take up the governor\u2019s plan to use gambling proceeds for property tax reduction, Cooper said.
\nRendell wants to put slot machines at 13 locations around the state, which he says could generate $1 billion for property tax relief.
\nThe money also could help increase the state\u2019s share of education funding to 47 percent \u2014 the highest level since 1977, Cooper said.
\n\u201cA 50-50 partnership is the goal,\u201d she said.
\n(The Associated Press contributed to this article.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Several months ago, The Tyrone Area School District had planned to fund the district\u2019s middle school expansion\/renovation project with cash. Now, the district is considering a possible change and will address the issue at next Tuesday\u2019s Tyrone Area School District board meeting. \u201cWe are considering possible funding options after realizing some conditions have changed over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44991\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}