At its Jan. 19 combined committee meeting, the BASD school board discussed next year’s budget, a comparison of academic performance during hybrid learning and normal (fall 2019) learning, and the results of drinking water lead tests across the district. Additionally, Bo Travis of accounting firm Gorman & Associates informed the board of the clean audit report for the district for the 2019-20 fiscal year.

Chief Financial Officer Stacy Gober presented a draft budget with a projected expenditure increase of roughly $8 million and a projected revenue decrease of $2.7 million. Although the district expects to receive a disbursement of federal funds from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief II (ESSER II) package, Gober and board president Mike Faccinetto noted that this money should be spent on one-time coronavirus-related costs, like additional BASD Cyber Academy tuition, rather than filling budget holes caused by rising pension and charter school costs.

Gober reminded the board that for the past several years, the district has followed the Act 1 exception process, which requires a preliminary budget adoption by Feb. 8 in order to maintain the ability to apply to the Pa. Department of Education for an exception to Act 1 that would allow it to raise taxes beyond the index level of 3.7 percent. However, Gober and the district administration recommended that the board opt out of the Act 1 exception process this year.

BASD has roughly six months to balance the budget before voting on a final document in June; the board will vote on an Act 1 opt-out resolution at its Jan. 25 meeting. Even if the board adopts the resolution, they could raise tax millage rates by as much as 3.7 percent; a tax increase appears to be inevitable for next year.

Asst. Supt. Dr. Jack Silva discussed with the board an evaluation of secondary students’ report cards from the first marking period. After the first quarter of instruction in the current school year, BASD surveyed parents and teachers and worked with building administrators to assess students’ performance under the hybrid and virtual models currently in use, and compared this performance with students’ achievement under normal conditions in the fall of 2019.

In the first marking period of 2019-2020, 45.6 percent of all secondary (middle and high) school grades were “A;” in the same marking period this year, the number fell to 42.0 percent. “F” grades rose from 7.7 percent to 13.6 percent of all secondary grades. Silva said that a doubling of the rate of “F” grades has been observed nationally. He presented several tactics instituted by secondary school principals, including the creation of “academic recovery modules” and “learning contracts” so students can rehabilitate their grades. A breakdown of the grades by grade level and by school is available from the school district at: https://go.boarddocs.com/pa/beth/Board.nsf/Public

Chief Facilities Officer Mark Stein presented the results of the annual district-wide assessment of drinking water in schools. As board member Dean Donaher pointed out, annual water testing is not required for schools, but Stein’s office has made it a priority.

BASD tested one kitchen faucet and two water fountains at each school for lead, using both a primary sample (when the water is initially turned on) and a flush sample (after the water has been running five minutes). The vast majority of water outlets had lead levels below 0.001 micrograms per liter. However, a kitchen faucet at Donegan ES had levels of concern to the district (primary results of 0.004 micrograms per liter and 0.003 on the flush test), as well as a water fountain in the SPARK building (0.007 on the primary test and 0.001 on the flush test). The district’s facilities team will evaluate both fixtures.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has stated that there is no safe level of lead in drinking water, and has set the maximum contaminant level goal for lead at zero. However, “because lead contamination of drinking water often results from corrosion of the plumbing materials belonging to water system customers, EPA established a treatment technique rather than [maximum contaminant level, based on the maximum contaminant level goal] for lead.” The EPA treatment technique of optimizing corrosion control in the water supply and replacing irremediable portions of lead service lines is triggered when more than 10 percent of tap water samples within a system exceed the lead “action level” of 15 parts per billion.