Down River – January 25, 2018

By John Lipez

He Wasn’t Crying Wolf:

Every year for the last few years at Keystone Central school district budget time, board member Charlie Rosamilia would raise his hand and raise his voice and tell anyone who was listening that the school district was on the path to financial doom and all that goes with it if it continued to take no steps to control spending and continued to tap its once burgeoning fund balance.

A majority of his fellow board members paid no heed and, in retrospect, no one in the district administration either a) took Rosamilia’s concerns seriously enough; b) disagreed with his fears; or c) just didn’t want to address what some had to know was an onrushing financial quagmire.

Now the district (not unlike a lot of other Pennsylvania school districts) is struggling economically and, in these most difficult times, Keystone Central is for a while longer devoid of anyone in the administration office.

Someone in high places should have seen this coming and responded more aggressively. Now community confidence in the district has been shaken and public trust is at stake. The quality of the education of our young people has to be negatively affected, given the breadth of cuts under consideration for next year.

How did we get here? Let’s go through this four-year-old district financial free-fall, using past Record stories:

In May of 2014 The Record headline said the district was approving a 2.56 percent tax hike (what then-superintendent Kelly Hastings called the first in several years). And then-board president Jack Peters proclaimed that the district fund balance had seen four years of growth and sat at better than $20 million.

It was May of 2015 and the school board approved a no-tax hike budget, but one which would take $3.475 million from district reserves. Rosamilia went on record with a warning that spending was “getting out of control…back to the free-spending days of the past.” That same meeting heard then-board member Butch Knauff say he wanted a tax hike that year, to no avail. Knauff, voted off the board last November, warned the district had to begin cuts or “otherwise we’ll be broke.”

Then we look at May of 2016, the year a tax hike of 2.87 percent was approved. It was decided that year to pull $6.8 million from the district’s financial reserves to balance the budget. Rosamilia argued against the tax hike, stating the district reserve at that time was at $17 million, what he called “the taxpayers money” and said he did not want taxes increased until the balance was used up.

And in the spring of 2017The Record headline was “New KCSD Budget: Tax Hike, Expense Cuts in Offing.”
Another big chunk of the ever-shriveling reserve was tapped yet again, this time in the amount of $5.71 million, meaning that better than $20 million in 2014 had been reduced to just about $6 million. The financial package for the current year also called for a tax hike of 3.4 percent.

Again Rosamilia warned that more cuts were needed, seeking another $2 million in reductions from the proposed budget. Several board members last spring did pledge to the public a willingness to bring them into the budget creation process for the school fiscal year starting July l of this year. And the board, true to that intention, did provide the opportunity for community participation in the budget formulation process. It fostered the presently existing community task force, a positive idea from the district perspective, part of the need to share with the community the complexity of balancing a school budget when Keystone and so many districts are faced with lagging state reimbursement and ballooning pension and health care costs.

Here we are, in January 2018, administratively rudderless as a school district can be. Hastings and ex-officio No. 2 administrator Terry Murty are gone from their positions, leaving of their own volition, cashing in their earned financial benefits over the next few months or so, otherwise severing their increasingly strained relationship with an evolving school board, what with the large scale board turnover through resignations and election results.

In the meantime Rosamilia has ascended to the board presidency and he knows full well the challenge is a considerable one, for him and for the district. He’s the guy that saw the financial maelstrom coming and short term he is the guy to hold things together until a permanent superintendent is in place and the newly constituted school board gets comfortable with its policy-setting responsibilities.

And Rosamilia knows the clock is ticking. There was a setback when an in-house pick for “substitute” superintendent changed his mind so the district had to go searching for a short-term replacement and found one in Columbia County, a special meeting to hire him set for next Tuesday. Then it is the board’s responsibility to find a solid permanent replacement.

If and when the right match is found, the selling job will be a difficult one. If a school administrator is looking for a challenge, he or she will find none more challenging than the opportunity which awaits in Keystone Central.

The right choice must be made and proper board, teacher/staff and community support must be given to the new hire. In the meantime there will be some level of pain as cuts occur; there appears to be no other way around it. The district’s once mammoth fund balance is all but gone and district property owners will be asked to help pick up the slack. It will take a team effort to restore some level of luster to Keystone Central. Down River wishes Charlie and all Keystoners nothing but the best in the effort. The future of our children and grandchildren is at stake.