School Superintendent Discusses the State of the District

Aware of the potential for a heated discussion over school taxes, an audience of about 75 was asked to use their “library voices” Tuesday night when asking questions of East Penn School Superintendent Dr. Thomas Seidenberger.

Not coincidentally, the discussion took place in Emmaus Public Library.

“We wanted a smaller venue to keep it a more intimate discussion,” said one of the event's organizers, Noreen Yamamoto. “It also limits the possibility of the conversation getting out of control.”

The district school budget is a hot button issue because on Jan. 24 the school board  presented a preliminary budget that calls for a 4.79 percent school tax increase.

But it's important to note, as Sedenberger himself said, "the final budget won't look anything like the final one."

State law actually limits the district to a 1.4 percent increase, but Act 1 also allows schools to seek exceptions that would allow a higher increase.

"We can't keep spending, spending, spending," said one member of the audience. "We have to look at everything and cut, cut, cut.

Seidenberger said it wasn’t as simple as that because the district already operates lean.

“We are not fat,” he said, “and that’s both the good news and the bad news.”

It’s bad news because no matter the final budget, cuts will still have to be made, Seidenberger has said. And that begs the question, what should be cut?

The superintendent said he couldn’t answer that. Though at one point he did say that he will “have to review the special needs budget. I hate to do it, but we have to look at it.”

The special needs budget includes expenses for students with disabilities.

“I can tell you from personal experience,” Seidenberger said, “that educating an autistic child is very rewarding, but it’s also very expensive.”

One of the sticking points for all Pennsylvania schools, he said, was paying for programs mandated by the state. These unfunded programs include special education and programs for English language learners, two groups that have grown in East Penn.

The organizers of the forum in the library Jan. 25 are from a grass roots group called East Penn Invested Citizens, or EPIC.

“The purpose of the discussion was to be informative and educational for the public,” said Nicole Bassett, one of the founding members of EPIC.

In that spirit, Seidberger spent an hour and 10 minutes going through a PowerPoint presentation that explained the budget process, and gave a lot of details about the district’s finances. (That PowerPoint presentation is now available on the district's website as well as its information about the proposed budget.

For some parents, the presentation was too many trees and too little forest.

“I wanted a big picture,” said the parent of a Lincoln Middle school student after the meeting. “I wanted to know what we’re going to do?”

Another parent of a high school student said she was a little disappointed because she was “hoping to find some unified solution or goal that everyone could agree on.”

The question and answer period was actually limited to about 20 minutes because of the length of the superintendent's presentation.

On the other hand, Bassett said, we had people who disagree about issues in the district sitting right next to each other, and that’s a start, she said.

If you were at the meeting, please leave your comments and impressions.