Northern Lehigh School District could realize substantial increases in its Basic Education Funding if Gov. Josh Shapiro’s budget is passed.

District Business Manager Sherri Molitoris announced at Monday’s school board meeting the district would receive an additional $276,000 in revenue in basic funding.

As for the Ready to Learn Block Grant, Molitoris said the district could see an additional $24,000.

She said the tax equity supplement is flat funded this year, and noted that the board passed a resolution last month that it would use that to offset its debt service payment.

In special education funding, she said the district would receive an additional $81,000 in revenue next year.

Molitoris detailed additional benefits if the budget passes with no changes:

• The budget includes continued funding of the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency for Safe Schools Initiatives.

• Cyber Charter School funding would be capped at $8,000 per student, an initiative he tried to pass last year but it fell short, but he has brought it back into his budget again this year.

• Last year the Homestead/Farmstead received a significant amount of money from the Tax Revenue Gambling in Pennsylvania, and this year Shapiro is recommending again another $1 billion to be put into that. That means a minimum of about $160 per resident who qualifies for Homestead/Farmstead, and that will basically differ on school districts based on how many members within your community actually apply and are approved for Homestead/Farmstead.

“Although the state budget is looking a little favorable for Northern Lehigh, we always have to keep in our back of our mind that we do have the federal regulations, and we’re not sure what’s happening federally,” Molitoris said.

“If any of those federal initiatives for Title I grants and Title I funding goes away, along with IDEA funding that we received from the IU (Northern Lehigh receives about $900,000 a year in federal funding), if federal funding goes away, we are going to be short $900,000 in our budget, which is used to pay teacher salaries; 99% of that money goes to teacher salaries, teachers and paraprofessionals.”

Molitoris said the state budget for Northern Lehigh is looking at about $381,000 in additional revenue if that budget passes as the governor presented it on Feb. 4.