Superintendent says delayed state budget could force loans; parents and staff press for pre-K pay parity, more classroom adults
October 09, 2025 | York City SD, School Districts, Pennsylvania
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Superintendent Barry Brown said the school district is “kind of functioning without a budget” and warned that, if the state does not enact a 2025-26 budget soon, the district may need to borrow to cover day-to-day operations.
The warning came at a combined Recovery Plan Advisory Committee and budget "listen-and-learn" meeting, where administrators outlined the 2026-27 budget timeline and answered input from teachers, parents and staff about priorities for the next fiscal year.
Brown told the meeting the district’s overall spending is large — “we have over a $200,000,000 budget” — and that borrowing to function could carry significant interest costs. “So to get money to function day to day, it would cost us about $200,000,” he said.
Why this matters: the state budget impasse means this district and others are uncertain about the level of state funding they will receive for 2026-27. The superintendent said the district’s goal is to present a proposed budget to the board by March or April 2026 so it can meet the state’s 30-day public-notice requirement and be approved on or before May 20, 2026 (with final voting deadlines possibly extending to June 17, 2026).
Administrators briefed attendees on known and unknown factors shaping the 2026-27 plan. Known items included the district’s enrollment (about 6,483 reported at the meeting), a reported 87% graduation rate by the district’s senior-ratio method, and federal grant allocations for 2025-26: Title I $4,484,601; Title II $407,291; Title III $309,551 (plus a $17,845 immigrant-student offset); and Title IV-A $338,757. Brown and staff also noted the district had received more than 70 grants and more than $10.6 million in scholarships in the past year and that students from 56 countries are enrolled.
Uncertainties include the ultimate level of state funding (the district’s 2025-26 state budget had not been enacted at the time of the meeting), potential charter-school cost changes, and the terms of ongoing negotiations with the teachers’ union (referred to at the meeting as the YCEA contract).
Community input during the meeting focused on workforce and early-childhood priorities. Colleen Bourne, a pre-K teacher at Phineas Davis, urged higher pre-K salaries and said the pay gap between pre-K and K–12 teachers causes experienced pre-K staff to move to other positions. “Our hope is to bridge the gap between the pay scale of the K through 12 teachers for the pre-K teachers as well,” Bourne said.
Administrators said some work on pre-K salaries has already begun: the district has brought some pre-K staff back onto district payroll from contractors and intends to “right size” pre-K salaries, Brown said. Stakeholders also proposed bringing more instructional adults into classrooms (a strategy administrators said research supports), adding an early-childhood facility or dedicated space, expanding to a 3-year-old program, hiring a dedicated early-childhood director to oversee pre-K–grade 4, and placing a dedicated technology technician in each building.
On taxes, staff noted the Act 1 index for the district this year: the statewide index was described as 3.4% while the district’s adjusted index was 5.7%, meaning the district could raise property taxes up to that adjusted percentage if it chose to. Brown said he hopes the district would avoid large tax increases but raised the possibility of modest, steady increases to show consistent local effort to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, which oversees recovery monitoring.
No formal motions or votes were taken at the session; the meeting was organized to gather stakeholder feedback and record priorities for staff use in developing the draft 2026-27 budget. Staff said they will synthesize input gathered from these sessions and from survey data during November and December, prioritize items January–March, and return with recommendations to the board for a public presentation and vote in spring 2026.
The committee and district staff encouraged attendees to continue participating in the process; organizers said the next virtual meeting will require an RSVP and that a December 10 meeting is planned.
(Direct quotes in this article are attributed to participants who spoke at the meeting.)
The warning came at a combined Recovery Plan Advisory Committee and budget "listen-and-learn" meeting, where administrators outlined the 2026-27 budget timeline and answered input from teachers, parents and staff about priorities for the next fiscal year.
Brown told the meeting the district’s overall spending is large — “we have over a $200,000,000 budget” — and that borrowing to function could carry significant interest costs. “So to get money to function day to day, it would cost us about $200,000,” he said.
Why this matters: the state budget impasse means this district and others are uncertain about the level of state funding they will receive for 2026-27. The superintendent said the district’s goal is to present a proposed budget to the board by March or April 2026 so it can meet the state’s 30-day public-notice requirement and be approved on or before May 20, 2026 (with final voting deadlines possibly extending to June 17, 2026).
Administrators briefed attendees on known and unknown factors shaping the 2026-27 plan. Known items included the district’s enrollment (about 6,483 reported at the meeting), a reported 87% graduation rate by the district’s senior-ratio method, and federal grant allocations for 2025-26: Title I $4,484,601; Title II $407,291; Title III $309,551 (plus a $17,845 immigrant-student offset); and Title IV-A $338,757. Brown and staff also noted the district had received more than 70 grants and more than $10.6 million in scholarships in the past year and that students from 56 countries are enrolled.
Uncertainties include the ultimate level of state funding (the district’s 2025-26 state budget had not been enacted at the time of the meeting), potential charter-school cost changes, and the terms of ongoing negotiations with the teachers’ union (referred to at the meeting as the YCEA contract).
Community input during the meeting focused on workforce and early-childhood priorities. Colleen Bourne, a pre-K teacher at Phineas Davis, urged higher pre-K salaries and said the pay gap between pre-K and K–12 teachers causes experienced pre-K staff to move to other positions. “Our hope is to bridge the gap between the pay scale of the K through 12 teachers for the pre-K teachers as well,” Bourne said.
Administrators said some work on pre-K salaries has already begun: the district has brought some pre-K staff back onto district payroll from contractors and intends to “right size” pre-K salaries, Brown said. Stakeholders also proposed bringing more instructional adults into classrooms (a strategy administrators said research supports), adding an early-childhood facility or dedicated space, expanding to a 3-year-old program, hiring a dedicated early-childhood director to oversee pre-K–grade 4, and placing a dedicated technology technician in each building.
On taxes, staff noted the Act 1 index for the district this year: the statewide index was described as 3.4% while the district’s adjusted index was 5.7%, meaning the district could raise property taxes up to that adjusted percentage if it chose to. Brown said he hopes the district would avoid large tax increases but raised the possibility of modest, steady increases to show consistent local effort to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, which oversees recovery monitoring.
No formal motions or votes were taken at the session; the meeting was organized to gather stakeholder feedback and record priorities for staff use in developing the draft 2026-27 budget. Staff said they will synthesize input gathered from these sessions and from survey data during November and December, prioritize items January–March, and return with recommendations to the board for a public presentation and vote in spring 2026.
The committee and district staff encouraged attendees to continue participating in the process; organizers said the next virtual meeting will require an RSVP and that a December 10 meeting is planned.
(Direct quotes in this article are attributed to participants who spoke at the meeting.)
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