The Erie School District is close to being taken off the financial watch list. Officials say it would be a first in Pennsylvania, but what does this mean for the schools and your taxes?
The school district has been on the watch list since 2017. Now, they feel it’s time to be taken off the list.
Erie School District petitioned the state a year ago to get out of financial watch because they had a structurally balanced budget.
However, the Department of Education needed to have a financial administrator appointed to make that recommendation to the Secretary of Education. Wednesday night, that financial administrator was appointed to begin the process of being removed from the list.
The superintendent said this is also great news because they would be making history.
“We would be, I’m being told by the department, as being the first district in the history of the commonwealth to ever be removed from either financial recovery or financial watch, so that is very exciting news for us,” said Brian Polito, superintendent of the Erie School District.
They raised taxes 4.5 percent in June before the state approved its budget, so they didn’t know what their allocation was going to be. Polito said the district did get an $18 million subsidy increase.
He also said the school’s state-appointed financial advisor ran through the projections with the school board last week.
“Its showed that that $18 million really did stabilize our finances. Because of that, we will be able to keep all of our stimulus fund initiatives and get back down to the two to two and a half percent tax increases moving forward,” Polito added.
School board member Daria Devlin said they are very aware people are concerned about their property taxes.
“When the state does not do its part in providing necessary subsidy, then the burden falls on the taxpayers, which none of us want. So we hope that as we move forward, we have seen financial projections out five years that show the district in the stable budget for that period of time,” said Daria Devlin, Erie School Board.
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Polito said they hope to have the financial administrator’s report very soon and added they could be weeks from being taken off the watch list.