The Salisbury Township School District Board of Directors held an operations and finance committee meeting April 9 following an executive session. The board heard presentations on projected student enrollment and allocation of staff as well as new positions proposed by administration. Using this information the board was tasked with deciding the tax rate levied on taxpayers and ensuring a balanced budget.

The meeting began with several citizen’s comments starting with Denis Entle who addressed the issue of the district’s budget surplus by stating “Any budget surplus should be moved to financing the upcoming budget.”

Jonah Nemitz raised a concern to the board about a rule he was recently made aware of stating teachers are not permitted to give a student a grade of lower than 50% in the first and third quarter marking period. He took issue with this rule because it does not teach responsibility which is one of the core values of the Salisbury High School Profiles of a Graduate and is not reflective of real world situations.

Mike Segata and several Salisbury wrestlers spoke on behalf of interim head coach Bob Fiedler who has served the team for the past five seasons as assistant coach and stepped up this year as head coach. Segata outlined the many ways in which Fiedler has gone above and beyond the typical coaching responsibilities for the benefit of the team.

Most notably, Fiedler, who was not able to be at the district tournament due to the birth of his son, wrote each wrestler a personalized letter of encouragement in his absence. Wrestlers Segata, Colton Tone, Jarrod Blunt, Jacob Spinner and Jacob Watson read excerpts from their letters and expressed how meaningful it was to have these letters to read before their competition.

Segata and the wrestlers wanted to ensure the board was made aware of Fiedler’s impact on the team as they considered candidates to fill the head coaching position permanently.

The operations portion of the meeting began with an enrollment and staffing update. Superintendent Lynn Fuini-Hetten remarked this is always a difficult conversation and “when we look at our budget we need to make sure that we are allocating resources effectively and responsibly. Quite simply, there is never enough money to do everything we want to do.”

She noted when looking at a 5-year forecast, if the district continues with the current trends and staffing levels coupled with the increases already approved through collective bargaining agreements and health care costs, the district will see a deficit in the millions in the near future.

The administration’s proposal assumes a tax increase of 4% and will affect class size and staffing needs based on enrollment projections for the 2025-2026 school year.

Coordinator of Human Resources Ralph Lovelidge gave an in-depth presentation depicting projected student enrollment and allocation of staff for the 2025-2026 school year. The administration’s proposal has budgeted for three new teaching positions overall.

Salisbury Elementary School will subtract two teaching positions from first and third grade due to a reduction in population at those levels and reallocate one teacher to learning support and one teacher could be at the kindergarten level. One full-time instructional assistant will be added in special education.

At the middle school level, an autistic support class will be added which will create the need for one teacher and three full-time instructional assistants to support the new class.

Other staffing increases at the middle school include a part-time library media specialist, a math intervention teacher and possibly a part-time teacher.

Salisbury High School would see a part-time media specialist move to full-time.

Much discussion ensued over the topic of hiring more library media specialists and the important role they play in the education system from developing literacy, teaching research skills and information literacy, as well as collaborating with teachers to integrate library resources with classroom instruction and projects.

Fuini-Hetten said because the librarians are split between buildings, teachers and students are not able to fully access the library and all that library media specialists have to offer.

Director Laura McKelvey said she is more inclined to hire a teacher to reduce class size or a math interventionist to remedy lagging math scores and felt the district has enough library media specialists and the underutilization of them is due to inefficiencies in scheduling.

She went on to say, “I don’t know that we should be hiring anyone because we can’t afford what we currently have.”

Director Thomas Spinner added the justification of positions is crucial and the last thing they want to do is hire people and have to furlough them two years later.

Director Sarah Nemitz who expressed she has much to consider before rendering an opinion, reported House Bill 215 is currently being considered and it would require each school to have one librarian on staff so eventually this decision may not be up to the district.

The next item on the agenda is an administration request for the purchase of a 10-passenger van to alleviate the challenges of transporting small groups of students for approximately 12 clubs or teams. Bill Brackett, director of facilities, has looked into two types of vehicles and recommends the purchase of a Ford Transit Conversion which seats 10 people at a cost of $62,615.

No financing will be needed as money for the purchase is available and according to Chief Financial Officer Dawn Nickischer, insurance costs will be nominal.

Coordinator of Technology and Transportation Chris Smith presented a technology refresh update and the results of the iPad pilot program at Salisbury Middle School.

Students in grade 5-8 were surveyed and overwhelmingly favored using a laptop over the iPad citing challenges in the areas of typing, note taking and the utilization of apps. Additionally, they struggled with multitasking between tabs, file structure and organization and collaborating during group projects due to the iPad’s smaller screen size.

Some of the benefits of using the iPad were its dual cameras and portability but these benefits did not outweigh the drawbacks.

On March 5, Apple released the M4 MacBook Air with a new pricing model. After much consideration and negotiating, Smith is recommending using iPads in grades K-4 and the MacBook Air M4 in grades 5-12 with a 4-year lease with 0% interest for an annual cost of $440,548. He has negotiated a buyback of $404,250 and asked the board to give an informal approval so he can place an order as soon as possible.

During the finance committee portion of the meeting, Nickischer provided a year-end projection of $2.5 million growth in fund balance due to an increase in collections over budget in five areas – local revenues, earned income taxes, business privilege taxes, delinquent real estate taxes and interest.

Director Bill Gaither raised the question why the board continues to keep an estimated $2 million in fund balance surplus from the taxpayers to which Fuini-Hetten responded the money is being allocated to the upcoming HVAC project at the high school which will cost between $11-$12 million.

“It’s not as if we are taking that money and socking it away,” Director Joseph Gnall said. “It’s going back into the building.”

As requested at last month’s meeting, Nickischer presented a 5-year projection summary which provides a rough estimation of budget projections but is largely a work in progress.

Also presented was a budget update which showed a balanced budget and synopsis of revenue generated at varying rates of tax increase from 4% to 2.3% and the amount of lost revenue over time.

After all the financial information was put forward, the board needed to decide what tax rate they felt comfortable levying so the administration could prepare a proposed final budget.

Nemitz, noting the business privilege tax has consistently been coming in over budget for several years, wondered if that line item was budgeted more closely with what has actually been collected, would it allow the board to bring the property tax down a quarter percent for a tax levy of 3.75%?

A majority of board members felt this was an idea they could support and it was agreed a 3.75% tax levy would be imposed for the 2025-2026 budget.

The next topic of discussion was whether board members supported three new teaching positions added to the budget.

McKelvey again said she does not agree with adding the librarian position and posed the idea that the estimated $133,407 for salary and benefits should be earmarked for other purposes like science supplies, building upgrades or future contract negotiations.

Spinner agreed with McKelvey and called for clarification on what these new positions will cost the district over the next few years – not just what it will cost for one year.

The board could not come to a consensus on the librarian position so the decision was tabled and Gnall said he would like to talk to board members directly before rendering a decision.

With the librarian position on hold, Fuini-Hetten was given the go-ahead to post the math intervention position, autistic support teacher, learning support teacher and four instructional assistants.

The next meeting of the operations and finance committee will be 7 p.m. May 7. All meetings are held in the administration building, 1140 Salisbury Road, Allentown.