A warning to school boards across Pennsylvania

Some days really important stories get lost in the shuffle.

They aren't especially sexy. They likely will not be splashed all over our front page. They probably won't be "trending," or amass the much-salivated over "clicks."

They are just very, very important, literally the kind of story that could easily fall through the cracks if it were not for newspapers and their traditional role of "watchdogs."

I refer to a story that appeared on Page 4 of Wednesday's paper. It deal with school budgets and taxes. I know, your eyes are starting to roll back in your head as they glaze over.

Think again.

That might be especially true if you happen to be a school board member - or a property owner who pays the taxes that make up the bulk of school budgets.

Something a Montgomery County judge did should have school board members all across Delaware County waking up at 3 a.m. in a cold sweat.

Judge Joseph A. Smyth ordered the Lower Merion School District to rescind the 4.4 percent tax hike they enacted, and told them any hike must be capped at 2.4 percent.

But he actually said a lot more than that.

Basically, the judge agreed with lawyer Arthur Wolk, who filed a class-action lawsuit against the district and their budget practices last February. In short, Wolk believes the district was "cooking" the books. And the judge agreed with him.

The judge said the district was misleading taxpayers by projecting big deficits, thus necessitating tax hikes, at a time when they actually were stashing away huge budget surpluses. And he says they've been doing it for years.

Of course, the school district sees it differently and says they will appeal the ruling.

Lots of school districts all across Delaware County run healthy surpluses.

Residents in Rose Tree Media have been complaining about this kind of budget shenanigans for years. They consistently have questioned the district's spending habits, as well as debt being incurred by the district.

You might remember this year Upper Darby School Board won kudos for tapping into their large fund balance to avoid slapping another tax hike on residents who have seen their tax bills jump consistently year after year.

At Interboro, they also siphoned off some money from their reserve, but still ended up hiking taxes and cutting some jobs.

Many districts insist these reserve funds are needed for unforseen capital projects as well as maintaining a good credit rating, which allows them to borrow money for critical projects.

But the ruling by Judge Smyth is undoubtedly a warning shot across the bow of every school district in Pennsylvania.

You've been warned.

Comments

shadowchb said…
Maybe you ought to add this warning to yours: The suit was filed by Gladwyne attorney Arthur Wolk, who argues that “public school education” should be inherently inferior to a private school education and that efforts by the District to provide high quality education to “public school” students constitutes fraud, deceit and theft. Wolk states that “public school education means basic adherence to the minimum requirements established and imposed upon school districts by the State Board of Education” and that public school students should not have access to programs that “are neither mandated nor normally part of a public education standard and are normally provided only by private institutions at larger expense to individual patrons who prefer to afford their children education and opportunities that are neither required, nor offered, nor appropriate for public education paid for by the taxpayers.” You might conclude from this that there is more to the backstory than you have let on. Mr. Wolk's basic argument is that any school district with a fund balance is somehow cheating the taxpayers. This is pure BS and makes the argument that the judicial retirement age for judges does not need to be extended.
September 1, 2016 at 10:20 PM
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