From the BCCT.
Pay attention: These are the taxes the Emperor wants you to pay.
Board looks to make budget cuts
By MANASEE WAGH
Bucks County Courier Times
The preliminary spending plan calls for a $441 average tax increase.
Pennsbury board members said they're anxious to slash estimates that point to skyrocketing taxes next year.
The preliminary budget plan passed by the board Thursday night calls for a $441 tax increase for a homeowner with the average assessed property of $31,304.
Residents who attended the meeting said they weren't happy with the prospect of paying an average tax bill of $4,980.
"I can't understand why no one talked about a tax decrease. Workers are being laid off [in other industries]. Why not in the school district? I'd like to see a 10 percent decrease in our taxes," said Leo Cohen.
The budget numbers for the next school year appear high at this point because the district doesn't know how much funding the state will supply, officials said. While local revenues might generate $145.3 million, that's $2.6 million less than last year, they said.
The main local downturn is because of the loss of fees from the Keystone Industrial Port Complex, a tax abatement area which is scheduled to end payments to Pennsbury in lieu of taxes after this year. The complex is on the site of the old U.S. Steel Fairless Works.
Other tax revenues are expected to be down, as are interim taxes on new construction and transfer taxes on real estate. The district also expects lower interest returns on its investments, officials said.
The economic downturn has contributed to a deficit of about $12 million in a $180 million budget, Miller said. Balancing the budget without reducing expenses would mean an increase of 14.1 mills, bringing total millage to 159.1.
Board members have repeatedly stressed that the preliminary budget is just an early estimate that is required by the state. Several spoke against allowing the final tax increase to reach the current projection of a 9.7 percent increase, which is far above the state's mandated maximum tax increase of 4.1 percent.
"I can state that our budget will not increase 4.1 percent. Nine point seven is just a number. It's not a fact," said board member Richard Johnson.
Officials said the district is working on several areas to lower expenditures, including transportation and energy efficiencies and employee attrition at all levels. If one teacher retires and the school can adjust the professional staff to cover that teacher's responsibilities, then the administration would recommend not hiring a replacement, district CEO Paul Long said.
The administration is considering an optional reduction in the number of classes taken by seniors who have fulfilled their graduation requirements. There also might be some reduction in standardized testing and in the Extra-K kindergarten programs. Pulling funding for Odyssey of the Mind is possible. All of those options still need to be explored and worked out, said Long.
Board member Linda Palsky suggested trying to get more private corporations to fund programs and resources.
To keep their promise to limit a tax hike to at or below 4.1 percent, a 5-4 majority of the board defeated a proposal to apply for state exceptions. Proponents of the administration's recommendation to apply for the exemptions said the district would have no insurance against a possible financial shortfall such as zero state subsidies. Exceptions allow school boards to raise taxes above the state-mandated 4.1 percent limit for uncontrollable costs such as special education and grandfathered debt.
Johnson and board members Gene Dolnick, Wayne DeBlasio, Arlene Gordon and Gregory Lucidi voted against the exceptions.
"I cannot vote for a 4.1 [tax increase], so there will be no way that I would vote for exceptions," said Gordon.
The details of the preliminary budget can be found on the Pennsbury Web site at www.pennsbury.k12.pa.us/pennsbury.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Free Lunch
From the BCCT.
Mark February 28 on your calendar too!
There really is a free lunch
By MANASEE WAGH
Bucks County Courier Times
Morrisville School District employees were treated by Chick-fil-A for keeping the students' education going after a furnace blast at one school.
Morrisville staff members received a treat for their recent resourcefulness in a tough time.
Chick-fil-A provided the entire district staff with free boxed lunches Friday for their efforts to continue the educational process with as few disruptions as possible following recent upheavals at M.R. Reiter Elementary. About 140 staff members enjoyed the lunches of sandwiches, wraps, fruit cups, brownies and iced tea.
"I'm overwhelmed. They were so generous. The teachers absolutely loved it," said Superintendent Elizabeth Yonson.
The Chick-fil-A "Eat Mor Chikin" cow stopped by the elementary classrooms to say hello to the students, too.
Chick-Fil-A gives the elementary students a positive character trait of the month as part of its Core Essentials Program. Teachers encourage students to explore and demonstrate that trait through classroom reinforcement and activities. The restaurant also provides supplemental materials for teachers and take-home information for parents.
If students are good at exhibiting the character trait of the month, they earn a free Chick-Fil-A nugget meal.
January's trait was resourcefulness, which district teachers and staff showed abundantly after a December furnace blast made Reiter unusable, said Jodi Hartenstine, the marketing director for Chick-fil-A on Oxford Valley Road in Middletown.
"It's using what you have to get the job done. They were exemplifying the trait there. Everybody was working together, and we wanted to do something to honor them for that, so we came up with the appreciation lunch," said Hartenstine.
Teachers and staff in Morrisville Middle/Senior High School and Grandview Elementary adjusted their activities and spaces to accommodate Reiter students as Reiter teachers worked to help their young students through the crisis.
More than 250 students in pre-kindergarten through fifth grades still are displaced and in various district buildings. Grades one and two soon will leave the high school and settle into modular units on the property of Grandview Elementary School. Grade five will stay at the high school for now, and kindergarten, third and fourth grades are sharing space with Grandview's regular population. Pre-kindergarten is at the Morrisville YMCA.
"It's so nice to have something to celebrate," said Diane Woodruff, a Reiter kindergarten teacher who's now in Grandview Elementary School. "We have bounced around this year. This was just an 'Ah-haaah.' You take a deep breath and really appreciate it.
"We've had to be really resourceful. It sort of saluted what we've been doing. It was delicious, and the kids thought the cow was absolutely adorable," she said.
Woodruff said she's been teaching her students to be resourceful.
They think of ways to use materials to substitute for things they sometimes might not have since leaving Reiter.
"We talk about how animals are resourceful in getting and storing food in winter. We have to do things so that if one way doesn't work, come up with a new one. Don't give up," she said.
The Middletown Chick-Fil-A will sponsor a Morrisville School District Spirit Night Feb. 28 during which customers who mention Morrisville School District will get discounts. About 15 percent of proceeds from the event will be given to the district, according to a company press release.
Mark February 28 on your calendar too!
There really is a free lunch
By MANASEE WAGH
Bucks County Courier Times
Morrisville School District employees were treated by Chick-fil-A for keeping the students' education going after a furnace blast at one school.
Morrisville staff members received a treat for their recent resourcefulness in a tough time.
Chick-fil-A provided the entire district staff with free boxed lunches Friday for their efforts to continue the educational process with as few disruptions as possible following recent upheavals at M.R. Reiter Elementary. About 140 staff members enjoyed the lunches of sandwiches, wraps, fruit cups, brownies and iced tea.
"I'm overwhelmed. They were so generous. The teachers absolutely loved it," said Superintendent Elizabeth Yonson.
The Chick-fil-A "Eat Mor Chikin" cow stopped by the elementary classrooms to say hello to the students, too.
Chick-Fil-A gives the elementary students a positive character trait of the month as part of its Core Essentials Program. Teachers encourage students to explore and demonstrate that trait through classroom reinforcement and activities. The restaurant also provides supplemental materials for teachers and take-home information for parents.
If students are good at exhibiting the character trait of the month, they earn a free Chick-Fil-A nugget meal.
January's trait was resourcefulness, which district teachers and staff showed abundantly after a December furnace blast made Reiter unusable, said Jodi Hartenstine, the marketing director for Chick-fil-A on Oxford Valley Road in Middletown.
"It's using what you have to get the job done. They were exemplifying the trait there. Everybody was working together, and we wanted to do something to honor them for that, so we came up with the appreciation lunch," said Hartenstine.
Teachers and staff in Morrisville Middle/Senior High School and Grandview Elementary adjusted their activities and spaces to accommodate Reiter students as Reiter teachers worked to help their young students through the crisis.
More than 250 students in pre-kindergarten through fifth grades still are displaced and in various district buildings. Grades one and two soon will leave the high school and settle into modular units on the property of Grandview Elementary School. Grade five will stay at the high school for now, and kindergarten, third and fourth grades are sharing space with Grandview's regular population. Pre-kindergarten is at the Morrisville YMCA.
"It's so nice to have something to celebrate," said Diane Woodruff, a Reiter kindergarten teacher who's now in Grandview Elementary School. "We have bounced around this year. This was just an 'Ah-haaah.' You take a deep breath and really appreciate it.
"We've had to be really resourceful. It sort of saluted what we've been doing. It was delicious, and the kids thought the cow was absolutely adorable," she said.
Woodruff said she's been teaching her students to be resourceful.
They think of ways to use materials to substitute for things they sometimes might not have since leaving Reiter.
"We talk about how animals are resourceful in getting and storing food in winter. We have to do things so that if one way doesn't work, come up with a new one. Don't give up," she said.
The Middletown Chick-Fil-A will sponsor a Morrisville School District Spirit Night Feb. 28 during which customers who mention Morrisville School District will get discounts. About 15 percent of proceeds from the event will be given to the district, according to a company press release.
Independent or Consolidated?
From the Inquirer.
Note the Emperor: I'll only talk by email and Reiter's closed so kwitcherbellyachin.
Monica Yant Kinney: How a district's small size can magnify its challenges
By Monica Yant Kinney Posted on Sun, Feb. 15, 2009, Inquirer Columnist
If Gov. Rendell intends to push for statewide school consolidation, he should make Morrisville the first stop on a listening tour. Presuming he can handle the drama.
In the itty-bitty Bucks County community, Rendell would find parents who suspect the school board cares more about dismantling the district than educating children.
Plans for a new school for kindergarten through 12th grade crumbled after one board paid $2.5 million in fees to annul a previous board's $30 million construction bond - all in the name of saving taxpayers money.
Some locals love the walkable community's old-timey intimacy. Others, wary of old-timey facilities, desperately want to merge with a larger district - even though previous pleas were rebuffed by suburban snobbery.
Most everyone in Morrisville agrees they got lucky when the boiler exploded at M.R. Reiter Elementary on a December weekend. No children were killed.
But what to make of last week's asbestos scare, which briefly closed Morrisville Middle/Senior High?
"Parents are in the dark," says Damon Miller, so disgusted he's running for the school board. "Nobody trusts anybody. This town doesn't know what it wants."
Maybe not. But when your child's future is at stake, does Harrisburg know better?
Home, casa
Named after Robert Morris, who financed the American Revolution, Morrisville occupies two square miles hard by the Delaware River across from Trenton.
The 10,000-person borough is 75 percent white, 19 percent African American, 5 percent Latino, and 1 percent Asian. Forty-three percent of all residents rent.
Diversity and transiency define the 831-student school district, which has been known to receive 11 enrollments in a single day.
When Superintendent Elizabeth Yonson arrived four years ago, only 11 percent of 11th graders were proficient in math on state achievement tests. By 2008, the number had jumped to 55 percent.
In 2007, Morrisville third graders topped all test-takers in the county, which still has Yonson beaming.
"You know how wealthy the rest of Bucks County is. My parents can't even afford a quality pre-K."
So she sought grants, and now Morrisville offers preschool. And college-credit courses for teens.
"Last year, one of our grads started Penn State's main campus as a sophomore!" Yonson raves.
All this and more have parents like Ann Perry committed to saving the schools, not scrapping them.
"We don't want to send Emma to private school," Perry says of her first-grade daughter. "Life is not private school."
What now?
Morrisville Mayor Tom Wisnosky can't recall how many consolidation talks have taken place in his lifetime. He just knows they rarely surpass stereotypes of race and class.
"One time, people said that merging with Morrisville would lower their property values," Wisnosky tells me. "That's just one of the lies perpetuated about us."
Since the last letdown in 2004, he and others got behind the idea of building new - only to see that movement halted by a costly changing of the school-board guard.
"So what's the plan?" asks an angry Lisa Castillo as she picks up her daughter from Grandview Elementary, which took in students scattered by the explosion at Reiter. "We don't want our kids educated in trailers for 20 years."
School Board President Bill Hellmann would talk to me only via e-mail. He says that Reiter will remain closed, and that he'd like to renovate the two other schools.
As for Rendell's bold proposal to forcibly squeeze 500 districts across the commonwealth into 100?
Some say the governor is tilting at educational windmills, but Hellmann believes it's the right idea in taxing times.
"Morrisville," he writes, "is really too small to have our own school district."
Contact Monica Yant Kinney at myant@phillynews.com or 215-854-4670. Read her recent work at http://go.philly.com/yantkinney
Note the Emperor: I'll only talk by email and Reiter's closed so kwitcherbellyachin.
Monica Yant Kinney: How a district's small size can magnify its challenges
By Monica Yant Kinney Posted on Sun, Feb. 15, 2009, Inquirer Columnist
If Gov. Rendell intends to push for statewide school consolidation, he should make Morrisville the first stop on a listening tour. Presuming he can handle the drama.
In the itty-bitty Bucks County community, Rendell would find parents who suspect the school board cares more about dismantling the district than educating children.Plans for a new school for kindergarten through 12th grade crumbled after one board paid $2.5 million in fees to annul a previous board's $30 million construction bond - all in the name of saving taxpayers money.
Some locals love the walkable community's old-timey intimacy. Others, wary of old-timey facilities, desperately want to merge with a larger district - even though previous pleas were rebuffed by suburban snobbery.
Most everyone in Morrisville agrees they got lucky when the boiler exploded at M.R. Reiter Elementary on a December weekend. No children were killed.
But what to make of last week's asbestos scare, which briefly closed Morrisville Middle/Senior High?
"Parents are in the dark," says Damon Miller, so disgusted he's running for the school board. "Nobody trusts anybody. This town doesn't know what it wants."
Maybe not. But when your child's future is at stake, does Harrisburg know better?
Home, casa
Named after Robert Morris, who financed the American Revolution, Morrisville occupies two square miles hard by the Delaware River across from Trenton.
The 10,000-person borough is 75 percent white, 19 percent African American, 5 percent Latino, and 1 percent Asian. Forty-three percent of all residents rent.
Diversity and transiency define the 831-student school district, which has been known to receive 11 enrollments in a single day.
When Superintendent Elizabeth Yonson arrived four years ago, only 11 percent of 11th graders were proficient in math on state achievement tests. By 2008, the number had jumped to 55 percent.
In 2007, Morrisville third graders topped all test-takers in the county, which still has Yonson beaming.
"You know how wealthy the rest of Bucks County is. My parents can't even afford a quality pre-K."
So she sought grants, and now Morrisville offers preschool. And college-credit courses for teens.
"Last year, one of our grads started Penn State's main campus as a sophomore!" Yonson raves.
All this and more have parents like Ann Perry committed to saving the schools, not scrapping them.
"We don't want to send Emma to private school," Perry says of her first-grade daughter. "Life is not private school."
What now?
Morrisville Mayor Tom Wisnosky can't recall how many consolidation talks have taken place in his lifetime. He just knows they rarely surpass stereotypes of race and class.
"One time, people said that merging with Morrisville would lower their property values," Wisnosky tells me. "That's just one of the lies perpetuated about us."
Since the last letdown in 2004, he and others got behind the idea of building new - only to see that movement halted by a costly changing of the school-board guard.
"So what's the plan?" asks an angry Lisa Castillo as she picks up her daughter from Grandview Elementary, which took in students scattered by the explosion at Reiter. "We don't want our kids educated in trailers for 20 years."
School Board President Bill Hellmann would talk to me only via e-mail. He says that Reiter will remain closed, and that he'd like to renovate the two other schools.
As for Rendell's bold proposal to forcibly squeeze 500 districts across the commonwealth into 100?
Some say the governor is tilting at educational windmills, but Hellmann believes it's the right idea in taxing times.
"Morrisville," he writes, "is really too small to have our own school district."
Contact Monica Yant Kinney at myant@phillynews.com or 215-854-4670. Read her recent work at http://go.philly.com/yantkinney
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