As the boards fashioned their budgets, they were hit with the hard fact that recession-related declines in tax revenues during the last two years - lower property assessments, lower interest income, and stagnant housing sales - forced them to raise additional revenues or cut expenses to make up the deficits.
The looming shortfalls in revenues, combined with higher pension and medical premiums, drove taxes well above the inflation index in many cases, officials say.
"You have shrinking revenues, rising costs, and continuing mandates that cost money. That about sums it up," said David Davare, research director for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association.
Twenty-seven of the 64 school districts in Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties kept taxes at or below the 2.9 percent index. Five - Chester Upland, Morrisville, Neshaminy, Oxford, and Philadelphia - kept taxes at 2009-10 levels.
In nine districts, taxes went up by more than double the state inflation rate, and in three - Upper Dublin, Southeast Delco, and Bristol Borough - they went up by more than 10 percent. The 2010-11 property-tax increase for all 63 suburban districts averaged slightly more than 4 percent, up from 2.9 percent in 2009-10, even though the education inflation rate for this year was higher, at 4.1 percent.
In Bucks County's Bristol Borough district, one of the smallest in the area with an enrollment of about 1,225, taxes are going up 15 percent. School Board President Ralph DiGuiseppe III, who was elected in November, said almost the entire increase is because of a 2009-10 deficit, when the board did not raise taxes.
To keep from going even higher, DiGuiseppe said, the board has cut some teaching jobs, and will reduce administrative pay by having the superintendent double as high school principal for part of the coming school year. Another administrator will teach part time. Three sports teams also were eliminated.
