USC Board Prepares to Vote on Budget With Pay-to-Play Fees

The Upper St. Clair School Board is poised to finalize the 2011-2012 budget on Wednesday morning after another week of trimming expenses, mostly from the capital budget for athletic expenses.

Cut out of the budget is some $20,000 proposed for an athletic entrance, $10,000 for swimming pool entrance steps and delaying the start of an athletic bridge study and repair.

The budget, which will amount to $59,395,594 will require a .33 mil tax increase, which will cost an average of $66 per year for the average taxpayer. When the budget was presented last month, the expected tax increase was projected a .4 mils. The budget represents a 1.8 percent increase over the current year.

The school board hopes to raise approximately $50,000 per year with a pay-to-play fee for all and sports programs. Students will be assessed a fee depending upon which sport they play. Each sport has been designated by tier, which will determine if their fee is $100, $75 or $50. For example, baseball and football will cost $100 per player, lacrosse will cost $75 and tennis will be $50.

Provisions will be made for players in multiple sports. No player will pay more than $175 no matter how many sports they play, and no family will pay more than $275 for multiple players in sports programs.

Upper St. Clair will provide an early bird registration program for multiple registrations of $150. Provisions are also being made to provide scholarships for those students and families who are financially unable to pay the cost of registration.

The board will use approximately $142,956 from the fund balance to balance the 2011-2012 budget.

The board also entered into a memorandum of understanding with the district's bus drivers to accept a wage freeze for the coming year in exchange for a one-year contract extension.

Board members indicated that they would support the proposed budget and gave credit to administrators and staff for making needed cuts to balance the budget.

“What has happened over the past few months illustrates the difficulty that we are in,” said board president Harry Kunselman. “It’s very easy to say cut this and cut that, but we can’t legally make sweeping changes that would result in the kind of changes that would be necessary to prevent dipping into the fund balance. The situation next year is even worse, and we have a long road ahead of us.”

Kunselman said the process of trimming the budget has been “long, arduous and tenuous."

“I’m sure we’ll all have a tendency to breathe a sigh of relief when the budget is adopted, but it’s going to take us longer than three months to deal with the issues next year, and I would encourage all of us to take an earlier look at the budget in the fall," he said.

Kunselman said businesses and government would have to acknowledge Upper St Clair for its ability to increase spending only by 1.8 percent.

“Business and particularly health care costs go up far higher, so the notion that we can solve some of these issues simply by privatizing some of our functions is not accurate,” he said.

The board will take a final vote on the budget at 8 a.m. Wednesday.