Franklin Regional hikes taxes by 4 mills for 2025-26 school year

The Franklin Regional school board approved a final 2025-26 budget with a 4-mill property tax hike.

The board unanimously OK’d a final budget at its June 16 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 approximately $525,000 from its unassigned fund balance.

Property taxes will be assessed at 115.86 mills.

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.

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, district business director Jon 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 pandemic.

Perry said he is also waiting to see if Gov. Josh Shapiro’s proposal to cap cyber and charter school tuition, a move that could save the district up to $300,000, but added he’s not optimistic.

Official funding figures from the state will not arrive until passage of the state’s 2025-26 budget. State legislators’ budget talks revolve around the June 30 end of the fiscal year. However, the current state budget was not enacted until July 2024.