File - Penn Wood High School, in the William Penn School District (Kimberly Paynter/WHYY)
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The William Penn School District is planning to cut a number of academic interventionist, assistant principal and office secretary positions.
The endeavor is part of a larger effort to avoid a multimillion-dollar budget deficit in the 2025–2026 academic year.
Officials estimate the district would save approximately $2.5 million through the proposed downsizing and insurance coverage reductions.
“Our goal is to make sure that people have a job in 2025–2026,” Superintendent Eric Becoats said at the Feb. 20 school board budget meeting. “It may not be the job that you currently have, but with all of our review and analyzing of this, there is not a person who would not have a job.”
Without any changes, the cash-strapped district in Delaware County was staring at a projected $9.2 million budget shortfall in the upcoming school year. Sputtering cash flow and soaring costs forced officials into a corner.
“While I understand that because of budget deficits that cuts were necessary, I guess their choice in student-facing members of my association is tough and I wish they would have looked into what else they could have done,” William Penn Education Association (WPEA) President Andrea Fink said.
The teachers union is negotiating a new contract. The cuts would cover a sizable amount in the budget deficit, but it doesn’t make the decision to axe positions any less unsavory.
“On a personal note, no one wants to cut academic interventionists. There’s not really any extra staffing in our organization,” school board member Jennifer Hoff said at the meeting. “And unfortunately, that little extra is all we have and this has been done before, unfortunately, and is a direct result of inequitable funding throughout our history.”
Further complicating William Penn’s outlook is a number of bookkeeping issues. David Szablowski, the district’s interim chief financial officer, is “finding problems every single day.”
“I’m going to be brutally honest with you and it’s really not good news from what we have found so far,” Szablowski said at the meeting.
From duplicate payments to incorrect figures, Szablowski and his team have discovered myriad problems in his first three months on the job.
“Efforts are ongoing to recover the funds from those people that got the extra money, but we don’t have a whole lot of money and we don’t definitely pay people twice,” Szablowski said.
Fink was “shocked” to hear this amid ongoing contract negotiations between the teachers union and William Penn. She estimated about one-third of her members have been employed in the district for less than four years.
“I’m afraid that because of the budget concerns that the district has teachers will leave,” Fink said.
William Penn serves more than 4,500 students from the boroughs of Aldan, Colwyn, Darby, East Lansdowne, Landowne and Yeadon. More than half of the district’s students are classified as economically disadvantaged.
The district was one of six who successfully sued Pennsylvania, arguing the funding model was discriminatory and unconstitutional.
“The William Penn School District did the right thing by filing the charge against the state and I know it has been a long battle for us,” Fink said. “And our kids do deserve more funding.”
Pennsylvania has been providing underfunded school districts with millions of dollars — but the boost in funding couldn’t close the budget deficit. The district has ended three out of the past five years in the red.
In November, William Penn hired Public Financial Management to analyze its budgetary pressures.
During a January school board budget meeting, PFM revealed the district was facing a significant rise in expenditures stemming from a growth in benefits and salaries, charter school tuition costs and debt service payments.
“So much of our costs — staffing, health insurance — are all driven by unions and they’re fantastic and they’ve worked with us, but we really don’t have the wherewithal to properly do our job until we’re fully funded,” Hoff said in an interview.
These expenditures would equate to an operating loss of $9.2 million.
“For places like William Penn and many other urban school districts around the commonwealth, more funding comes in from the state. So that means that a bigger share of their revenue budget — the resources that they have on hand — they have no control over,” PFM Director Ian Tyson told WHYY News.
According to PFM, real estate taxes account for around 40% of William Penn’s revenues, compared to 50% from the state sources. Raising real estate taxes is one of the few ways the district can boost revenues.
To demonstrate the size of the deficit, PFM noted William Penn would theoretically have to raise taxes by 17.9%, or the state would have to provide an additional $10.4 million.
“William Penn has no options but to get through this, right? And we take our young people very seriously and our commitment to our community,” Hoff said. “So, that’s why we did the lawsuit in 2014 and that’s why we’ll continue, one foot after another, walking forward.”
Decision makers were left with the responsibility of taking a scalpel to an already chronically underfunded school district plagued with ailing infrastructure and raising real estate taxes once again on working-class families.
“It’s not like we have a lot of extra staff,” Becoats said in an interview prior to the most recent budget meeting. “So one of the things I want to do in this review is be prudent, but also make sure that we do not have a significant negative impact on the students or the schools because one of my main goals is to make sure that we continue to support the students and staff that we have in our building. So, it’s not a science getting to $9 million, it’s probably going to be an art.”
Gov. Josh Shapiro has proposed an additional $500 million increase to the state’s school funding formula during his February budget address. However, advocates have warned the funding boosts are not keeping pace with inflation.
Children First recently released a series of reports on the state of children in the Greater Philadelphia region. In “A Decade of Stalled Progress: Opportunity Stunted for Children in Delaware County,” the youth advocacy organization asserted students in low-wealth districts are still lagging behind in key skills.
“In Upper Darby, Southeast Delco, William Penn and Chester-Upland, only about one-third of third graders are reading on grade level. Just a few miles north in Haverford Township and Wallingford-Swarthmore, almost all third graders can pass the reading test,” the report said.
Meanwhile, schools with disproportionately high property taxes continue to struggle.
“For example, the William Penn school district property tax rate of 27.6 mills generates $9,411 per student,” the report said. “Meanwhile, the Radnor school district tax rate of 13.9 mills produces $26,211 per student because their housing values are so much higher than those in William Penn.”
Children First found school districts with the most vacancies in Delaware County were those with the lowest funds — such as William Penn.
Former WPEA President Joseph Martino left his job as a science teacher at Penn Wood High School several years ago, but he still has a picture of the thermostat in his old classroom during the summer. The temperature was 90 degrees Fahrenheit and the humidity was 52%.
“You can’t learn in that environment,” Martino said. “You can’t teach in that environment because your body’s almost like in a literal survival mode.”
He ultimately left because of low wages.
“I don’t envy Dr. Becoats at all,” Martino said. “I think that job is really hard. He has to also figure out how to keep teachers there, right? So he’s got to figure out a way to keep up with pay.”
School Board President Monique Boykins said these financial conditions put the administration in a tough spot having to solve a number of problems directly tied to school funding.
“How do you do that when you’re worried about if the doors are going to be able to stay open?” Boykins said. “If you’re going to be able to pay your teachers what they deserve?
Marie-Luise Faber, 46, wonders how her two kids in the district are supposed to thrive and “move forward into the next millennia without resources.”
“They see the failing infrastructure,” Faber said. “You walk into the building and the steps up to the building are literally crumbling. The wood is rotting away. Their roofs are leaking and they have floods in their classrooms. The high school had heating issues. So there’s classrooms that are freezing.”
Faber doesn’t want to see her taxes rise. The Lansdowne resident said some of her neighbors live on a fixed income.
“You don’t want to burden the community anymore that’s already struggling, but you can’t take it away from the students either because they already don’t have enough as it is,” she said.
Since January, PFM has worked alongside William Penn to update its model. With these adjustments, PFM told school board members during Thursday’s meeting that the initial $9.2 million shortfall has been reduced to $6 million.
The $2.5 million staffing modifications cut the deficit to $3.5 million. Shapiro’s proposed boost would net William Penn an additional $3 million in 2025–2026, bringing the deficit to a more manageable $500,000. However, this is no guarantee.
Another pathway would involve a real estate tax increase, but the law limits just how much William Penn can increase taxes. Any increase would generate less than $3 million in new revenue for the district.
Therefore, PFM believes closing the shortfall will likely require a proverbial alignment of stars — a “combination of savings, local revenue and state funding.”
But Hoff warned William Penn could enter a cycle due to a lack of state funding even if it finds the money to shrink the gap.
“We could go in and get pretty close and and do a balanced budget as we’re mandated to do. But what’s next year look like? What’s the year after? And we don’t know,” Hoff said.
William Penn is required by law to submit its budget by June 30.
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