Franklin Regional board will consider 4-mill tax hike in 2025-26 budget

The Franklin Regional school board is expected to approve a final 2025-26 budget with a 4-mill property tax hike.

The board unanimously OK’d a proposed final budget at its May voting meeting. The $71.25 million budget has a $671,000 deficit, covered with $147,000 from the district’s technology fund balance, along with just under $525,000 from its unassigned fund balance.

“While we have increases in both our local and our state revenue, we have about $175,000 less in federal revenue for the coming year,” district finance director Jon Perry said.

The state’s basic education subsidy has increased by $75 million for 2025-26 along with a $40 million bump in special education funding, however, Perry said that those are the lowest increases in the past decade, with the exception of the 2020-21 school year at the outset of the covid-19 pandemic.

Perry added that Gov. Josh Shapiro’s proposal to set a cap on cyber/charter school tuition that public school districts pay when district students choose that option could save the district up to $3o0,000, but he’s not counting on it.

“It’s not a novel idea, but it’s also never been successful,” Perry said. “Based on prior failures, I don’t think it will succeed this year. But there could be some movement or negotiations as we close in on a final (state) budget.”

The 4-mill tax hike would increase property taxes on the median-assessed district homeowner by about $139, according to budget documents. The district median assessed value is $34,850, an implied market value of $374,731.

A mill is estimated to generate about $360,000 in 2025-26, and if approved, the tax hike would mean an additional $1.4 million in revenue.

Franklin Regional, like all Pennsylvania school districts, also will see a bump in its mandated contribution to the Public School Employees’ Retirement System, or PSERS. The district will be responsible for a 34% share of the cost of teacher pensions.

Perry said PSERS doesn’t cost as much as it did a few years ago, but some of the cost-lowering changes have translated into additional challenges.

“They’ve modified the benefit structure to reduce benefits for new employees,” Perry said. “That’s part of what has made it less attractive to go into public school service. You used to be guaranteed a pretty great pension, but that’s not the case the way it was 15 or 20 years ago.”

Perry said recent PSERS reform in 2019 meant that newer pensions were much more similar to a private-sector 401K.

The board will take a vote on the final 2025-26 budget on June 16 at 7:30 p.m. in the Murrysville municipal building, 4100 Sardis Road.

Meetings are broadcast live on Comcast local access Channel 21, and streamed live at Murrysville.com’s Channel 21 page.