2023-2024 budget to stay within state taxing index

            At last Thursday's meeting of the Quakertown Community School Board, members voted unanimously to opt out of Act 1.

            This allows the school district to follow normal budget procedures and certifies that the tax rate is within the inflation index, which dispenses with the more complicated, expensive, and accelerated Act 1 budget requirements.

            The Pennsylvania Department of Education Act 1 determines the maximum tax increases for each tax the school district levies. 

            The resolution requires the board to make the following unconditional certifications: First, the school district's various tax levies and other revenue sources will be sufficient to balance the school district's final budget for the next fiscal 2023-2024 year. This is based on the school District's preliminary budget or other information available to the school board. Second, the school board will not, for the next fiscal year, increase the rate of its real estate tax or any other tax for the support of public education, by an amount that exceeds the applicable index of 4.7%.

            In addition, the board has to comply with the rules set forth in School Code 687 for the adoption of the school district's proposed and final budgets for the next fiscal year.

            The board also approved the 2023-2024 academic year Program of Study. The administration presented the board with three versions of the program. They needed to vote on reducing health/physical education credits to 1.5 for tech students only, reducing to 1.0 health/physical education credits for tech students, or no change in graduation requirements.

The school board approved the version of the program that did not change graduation requirements.

            Ryan Stetler, of Richland Township, addressed the board during public comment. Stetler has been working for Quakertown high school for 16 years. For most of those years, he has been a physical education teacher. He expressed concern that there was a consideration to reduce credits for health and physical education.

            Stetler reminded the members that he addressed a board meeting in December 2014 and protested against the proposed reduction of health programs.

            Ultimately, the decision was made to cut these programs and from 2015-2019 students were only required to take a 90-day health and education program in their freshman years, "and then sent out into the world to lead healthy lives," said Stetler.

            "After four years of this, mental health issues rose dramatically, substance abuse issues rose dramatically," he said.

            Stetler explained to the board the importance of teaching health-based lessons to students. "Health is the great equalizer."

            He also told the board that he knows the importance of health because he was diagnosed with stage four cancer four years ago and has defied the prognosis his doctors gave him.