Chester-Upland board reviews state mandates, budget outlook and safety, treasurer cites $4.3 million in savings

The Chester-Upland School District board of directors met March 19, 2026, and received reports on state legislative priorities, district policy deadlines and the preliminary budget outlook. Director McLaren summarized the legislative committee’s work and upcoming student advocacy plans for a 2027 trip to Harrisburg, and Treasurer Dr. Morales reported savings tied to a payroll/benefits form change.

Director McLaren, who identified herself as chair of the legislative committee, said the committee is building a narrative to defend and secure the district’s adequacy funding when it advocates in Harrisburg. She told the board the district is selecting students for the annual Harrisburg advocacy trip and that “the children do all the speaking when we go to Harrisburg.” McLaren flagged several recent and pending state actions: a newly enacted requirement to teach cursive in elementary grades, which she characterized as “an unfunded mandate” because the state did not provide additional funding for retraining or pacing changes; heightened attention to child-abuse awareness programming with a need to balance child safety and due process for families; and a bill under consideration to expand grant funding for later school start times.

On student-support policies, McLaren highlighted proposed rules that would guarantee daily recess and lunch times and prohibit withholding recess for discipline or attendance reasons. She said the current proposal asks for 30 minutes of recess and a 30-minute lunch period. She also said the Pennsylvania School Boards Association has raised objections to a proposed statewide cellphone ban as written, arguing it could remove needed local flexibility.

The policy committee outlined several compliance deadlines and operational items for the district. The committee said the K–3 evidence-based reading curriculum survey must be submitted by March 31, 2026; cyber-charter residency verification workflows should align to Act 47 annual windows (November 1 and March 1); the district must ensure 24-hour parent/employee notification for weapons incidents and verify building-level procedures; and quarterly school-safety and security-coordinator meetings should be scheduled. The committee further reported plans to insert threat-assessment coordination language into the district’s memorandum of understanding with law enforcement; the committee said detailed status updates will be provided at the receivers meeting.

In the treasury report, Treasurer Dr. Morales said recent changes to the PTE form 363 are “yielding a savings of $4.3 million.” She cautioned that the district remains in a structural deficit and that savings reduce, but do not eliminate, the shortfall. Dr. Morales said the district’s ready-to-learn grant has an adequacy component the transcript records as a multi-year amount (the spoken figure in the meeting transcript was unclear); she urged the board to refine narratives about how that funding is used to strengthen the district’s case for ongoing adequacy awards.

During staff discussion, directors thanked staff for instructional supports such as mannequins and simulators in the automotive engineering program. A director asked whether books arriving under the ready-to-learn grant would be distributed as one-per-student; a staff response indicated the likely approach would be classroom sets supplemented by digital materials because students already have one-to-one devices.

The board also announced two upcoming student events: the Frederick Douglass oral contest and the Andrew Turner art competition at the district STEM site on Wednesday, March 25, at 6 p.m., with a meal provided.

The meeting adjourned with no formal votes recorded in the transcript.