'Nobody's Happy' As Easton Passes School Budget

The Easton Area School Board has approved the district's 2013-2014 budget, which was balanced by a 1.7 percent tax increase, $750,000 from the district fund balance and an undetermined number of job cuts.

The board approved the budget Tuesday night after several unsuccessful attempts to decide on a tax rate and how much to take from the fund balance.

The final vote was 6-3, with board members saying they had no good options for balancing the $134.3 million budget.

“This is a terrible situation for all of us to be in," board member Janet Matthews said. “My father always told me in a compromise nobody’s happy, and I guess he’s right.”

Under the budget, the average district property tax bill will go up $56 a year, Chief Operating Officer Michael Simonetta said.

Simonetta said it's not clear yet how the budget will affect district employees. Initially, the 1.7 percent tax increase budget would have meant 34 job cuts. But that figure assumed the board would pull only $500,000 from the fund balance.

With an extra $250,000 in play, Simonetta said he hopes the district would need to cut fewer positions. It's not yet clear what those positions would be.

Board members rejected a zero percent tax increase that would have meant 53 job cuts, and a 2.1 percent increase that would have cost 27 positions.

Board member Robert Moskaitis was pushing for the zero percent increase. He criticized the district's teachers contract for providing 5 percent rasies in a time of "economic malaise" for a lot of Easton area residents.

"In a rational world, we’d realize this is no way to run a business," he said.

And board member Baron Vanderburg said the district had to weigh the needs to "6-year-old Bob" and "43-year-old John."

Both of them could be hurt by the outcome of the budget, he said, but "I’m not willing to damage 6-year-old Bob who may not have another chance at education."

But that's exactly what's happening with teacher cuts in the district, said PTA president Tara Gilligan. Like the school board, her group can't agree when it discusses the budget.

"But the common thread is that we don’t want any more teacher cuts. We can’t afford it," she told board members. "Please keep our teachers in place and our schools strong."

Last year, the district cut 131 jobs, most of them teachers. In 2010, 70 Easton area teachers lost their jobs.