Voters in Kutztown are asking about a significant tax rise.
For the upcoming academic year, the Kutztown Area School District is suggesting a tax hike of over 10%. District officials claim that growing tuition expenses for cyber charter schools, contractual responsibilities, and uncertainty in state and federal financing are the main reasons they are pursuing this proposed tax increase.
The district has been cutting expenses through other means, including staffing reductions, and last year's increase of a little over 3% was the first in ten years. The district had to submit a preliminary budget to the state and had to utilize actual numbers at that time due to the timelines for a referendum issue. A 10.62% tax increase would have been necessary at the time to reduce the budget deficit. Since then, the district has been working well together with the board and teachers' union to create a new contract that has partially offset that expense. In order to lower some of those expenses, they have renegotiated their transportation contract.
The district is prepared for the potential failure of the referendum. In such a scenario, the district will initiate a 4% tax increase and implement various measures to ensure a balanced budget by June 30th.
