Penn-Trafford approves 3-mill tax hike, dips into savings to cover remaining deficit

Penn-Trafford tax bills will raise $84 annually on average following the school board’s decision Monday to implement a 3-mill tax hike.

The board approved a $70 million budget with about $69.9 million in revenue Monday night. District tax rates will be 93.75 mills for Westmoreland County residents and 14.39 mills for residents living in the Allegheny County portion of Trafford.

One mill brings the district $314,000 in Westmoreland County and about $326,500 in Allegheny County.

With the tax hike, the average tax bill will be $2,781 for Westmoreland residents and $950 for Allegheny residents.

District business Manager Brett Lago initially proposed a budget with a 2.5-mill tax increase that was unanimously struck down by the board.

Board members Scott Koscho, Dallas Leonard, Jim Matarazzo, Rich Niemiec, Nick Petrucci, Toni Ising, Philip Kochasic and Martin Stovar approved the 3-mill tax hike. Bryan Kline was opposed.

“From the onset of this budget process,” Kline said, “I had said in my mind that I couldn’t support more than a 1-mill increase. With that being said, I understand the price of everything is going up.”

The district’s average assessed value for Westmoreland homeowners is $28,000. It is $66,055 in Allegheny County, where only 51 properties are registered in the district.

District faces cuts to staff, programs

Superintendent Matthew Harris emphasized the importance of increasing the district’s funding through a tax hike.

Prior to the board’s proposed budget approval in May, Harris cut two student learning assistant and five tutor positions, lost two classroom teachers and five paraprofessionals to attrition and eliminated about $319,000 from the district’s education programming, athletic and maintenance budgets.

The district will dip into its savings — which stand at about $4 million, Lago estimated in May, to cover the nearly $84,500 deficit in the budget.

But Lago is confident the district will make up the cost through continuing housing development in the area.

“Every year with the development we’re seeing,” he said, “revenue typically comes in over what it would sit at year to year.”

Penn-Trafford also began receiving in April rent from Laurel Technical Institute, which leases the first floor of the district’s administration building in Bushy Run Corporate Park. The board could decide to direct those funds to the district’s capital improvement budget or to its fund balance, Lago said.

Kline said he could not support a 3-mill increase out of concern for taxpayers.

“Our Penn-Trafford residents are still feeling the effects of the historic 32.5% tax increase that our county commissioners did last year,” he said.

The county raised property taxes 32.5% in its 2024 budget. There was no tax hike in 2025.

Kline optimistic about proposed cyber reform

Kline is hopeful proposed cyber charter reform, which could lessen some of the district’s annual expenses, will come to fruition.

“I think that’s the answer to this,” Kline said. “I challenge the governor, the Pennsylvania Senate and the Pennsylvania House to get to work on that.”

The state House Education Committee moved forward legislation last week to put a cap on the tuition that school districts have to pay for students in their area to attend one of the state’s 14 public cyber charter schools.

The legislation calls for a flat tuition rate of $8,000 per student — a motion included in Gov. Josh Shapiro’s proposed state budget for 2025-26. Special education tuition could still exceed that rate.

Annual cyber tuition rates vary throughout the state, ranging from $7,600 per student to nearly $29,000 per student, according to the Department of Education. Tuition rates are determined by a formula based on the school district’s budgeted expenses from the year prior.

The bill landed in the state Senate Education Committee on Friday.

Penn-Trafford spends about $2 million annually on cyber charter school tuition, Lago said. About 100 students living in the district attended cyber charter schools in 2024-25.

District expects little benefit from ‘adequacy formula’

The district does not appear to reap strong benefits from the state’s initiative to more adequately fund its 500 public schools, Lago said.

The PA Education Law Center and Public Interest Law Center filed a lawsuit against the state on behalf of six school districts, two statewide associations and several parents in November 2014, arguing the state’s formula for funding public schools violated the state constitution.

The case went to trial in 2021. A verdict was reached two years later, deeming the state’s education funding system unconstitutional. Shapiro allocated in 2023 $526 million to the so-called adequacy formula, which distributes funding to school districts through the state’s Ready to Learn block grant.

Shapiro’s proposed 2025-26 budget continues the $526 million allocation.

But Penn-Trafford’s state funding is only expected to increase 0.6% in 2025-26, Lago said.

“Under that formula, we fair very poorly,” he said. “Where some other districts (receive more funding) based on the factors that were included — poverty (rates), English language learners — we don’t do well.”

The majority of the district’s revenue, 55%, comes from local sources, Lago said. The state contributes 45%.

Board member Kochasic has watched the district’s state revenue remain stagnant across about two decades.

“It’s been a slow decline from the money we get from the state every year,” he said, “and it’s a travesty as far as I’m concerned. We’re a high-performing, low-cost spending (district), and yet we’re penalized for that.”