Board Members Butt Heads on Preliminary East Penn Budget

The is, by most accounts, a mere formality. The early-stage budget is required to qualify for special exceptions that would allow the district to exceed its state-imposed 1.7 percent tax increase cap.

However, even though Monday night’s vote was, as Board President Charles Ballard described it, “a pro forma exercise,” it did prompt a bit of verbal sparring between veteran board member Alan Earnshaw and board newbie Lynn Donches.

Donches asked Superintendent of Schools Thomas L. Seidenberger to provide the board with a zero percent budget, “so the board could see what it would mean to the kids and the community.”

She also asked Seidenberger if he could provide the board with a breakdown of the budget, categorizing expenses as mandatory, contracted and discretionary to give the board a better understanding of how district funds are being spent and where potential places to cut expenses might lie.

The preliminary budget expenditures total $120,475,388.

Earnshaw took Donches to task for the requests she made of Seidenberger, using the example of a third grade class to show how virtually all of the district’s expenses can be categorized as mandatory, contracted and discretionary.

It’s mandatory that the district provide third grade, he explained, but the third grade teachers are paid under contract and the supplies provided to those third grade classes are a discretionary expense.

Even the school buses used to transport those third graders back and forth to school fall into multiple budget categories, Earnshaw explained. “Buses are our largest discretionary expense,” he said, “but we are also under contract with the bus company.

“I would be quite opposed to using staff time to codify that,” Earnshaw said. “Because this budget is a paper exercise, I will support it.”