That's an average of a $10 million increase PER YEAR for 10 years in a row.
The budget for the 2012-13 school year was $194,440,000.
The budget for the 2022-23 school year is $296,971,916.
Enrollment for the 2022-23 school year is 12,146. (See page 156).
Enrollment has increased by fewer than 500 students over the last decade (459 to be exact) yet the budget has increased by over $102 million dollars in a decade. (Yearly average increase = $10.2 million annually.)
Who voted to increase the budget by millions of dollars, over and over again? The school board. Which is why we need to elect new faces to the board in 2023.
Did you know that the district was recently audited* by the PA Auditor General's Office The Auditor General concluded that:
"The 190-page report reads like a rebuke. Yes, school district practices were legal but they were hardly transparent."
“The overall results of this audit should raise concerns due to the districts’ common yet questionable practices that are placing an excess burden on taxpayers across Pennsylvania.”
“School boards will continue the practice of committing, assigning, and transferring millions of surplus dollars while routinely increasing taxes,” he wrote. “The districts indicated this to us in their responses."
Back to Basics believes that fiscal responsibility is vital to the health of our school district and believes that electing new faces to the school board in 2023 is the path towards greater financial accountability in the WCASD.
*Both the Lower Merion and Philadelphia school districts have had to refund taxpayers. Could this happen in WCASD?
