Lehighton Area School District’s preliminary 2021-22 budget restores bus transportation funding back to 2019-20 levels, it’s top business official said Thursday night.

Business Administrator Edward Rarick said $1.3 million is currently budgeted for transportation after it was initially cut from the 2020-21 spending plan.

Facing a significant budget deficit a year ago, Lehighton saved $992,810 by eliminating nonmandated transportation, but shortly before the start of the school year, it restored $800,000 and offered busing for students living outside Lehighton Borough. The district since added three bus stops along Second Street in town for elementary students living in the borough.

Lehighton has cut a projected $1.2 million 2021-22 budget deficit in half, dropping it to $584,731, over the last two weeks.

“We’re refining it every day,” Rarick said. “We had some over estimation in for budgetary reserve and we also had a renewal meeting for our health care plan and those expenditures are looking less than what I had anticipated.”

As it stands now, Lehighton’s proposed budget includes $43.06 million in expenditures and $42.47 million in revenue. The proposal includes a 4.2% property tax increase, which would follow a 3.6% increase from last year. A homeowner with a property assessed at $80,000 would see a $170 increase in property taxes. The district has to pass a proposed final budget in May and a final budget in June.

Closing deficit

“We’re moving in the right direction,” Rarick said. “I have some ideas about how to make up the deficit we have remaining. We have a meeting on Friday with our (Pennsylvania Information Management System) coordinator to discuss what individuals have committed to coming back from charter school.”

Lehighton has 206 students in outside cybercharter schools and 214 in its in-house Lehighton Area Virtual Academy.

District officials said if even half of the students who left for a cybercharter school last year would return, the district would be able to balance the budget.

Lehighton has estimated cybercharter tuition at $2.1 million. That is just over $1 million more than what was budgeted for that expense in 2020-21.

“I have a good feeling that we’re going to find out some students are coming back,” Rarick said. “I think transportation being included in the budget and not being such an unknown is big in the fact that parents know they’ll have that access.”

Library cuts

One item cut from the proposed 2021-22 budget was the district’s $20,000 contribution to the Lehighton Area Memorial Library.

Library Director Melissa Hawk asked the district Thursday to consider putting money back into its budget before final approval.

“I realize it’s a challenging time for the district, but a community library is such a valuable resource and I truly believe in what we do,” Hawk said.

Hawk described several of the ways the library has helped residents as of late.

“We helped a man find forms needed to fix an issue with Social Security benefits,” she said. “We selected books for a grandma helping her 5-year-old grandchild cope with the death of a pet. We provided contact information to a woman for a domestic violence center. We selected audiobooks for one of our regulars who is blind. Our library truly makes the community a better place to live.”

The district’s normal $20,000 donation makes up one-fifth of the library’s budget. Rarick said the line item will be discussed further at a district finance committee meeting next month.

“I do think the library has some value, but I also think it’s a community library and one-fifth of the responsibility of funding it shouldn’t fall on the district,” he said. “I have an issue with us not buying books for our own students and still giving to the public library at the amount we are giving. That’s a hard sell to me.”

Residents Autumn Abelovsky and Gloria Bowman also campaigned for the restoration of some funding for the community library.

“I can’t tell you how many times I take my children to the Lehighton library to check out books for book reports and research because they were not able to check them out from them district,” Abelovsky said. “During online learning, students were still expected to read and we were able to get those books from the community library.”

In other areas of note in the budget, the district is set to spend $561,732 under “Supervision of Fiscal Services.” That is a reduction of $71,000 from 2019-20 and includes reduced salaries from the elimination of the assistant business manager position and the secretary to the business office. It also includes the addition in 2021-22 of a human resources position.

Technology spending is projected to increase $416,000 over 2019-20 due to the implementation of a one-to-one program and the addition of a technology curriculum director. A $345,000 purchase of technology equipment to support the one-to-one program is designated to come out of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund money the district is slated to receive.

Lehighton’s administration and finance committee members lauded Rarick’s work on the budget.

“I think in the short time Ed (Rarick) has been here, he’s done a tremendous job of getting us back on track as best we can,” said Lehighton school board member Rita Spinelli.