By Colleen Cochran
Contributing Writer

The Avon Grove School District Board of Directors held its monthly meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 17. The meeting centered on three matters: comprehensive planning to support students in the future, budget planning in light of receipt of new state funding, and upcoming capital improvements.

Every three years, the Pennsylvania Department of Education requires each school district in the commonwealth to submit a comprehensive plan that outlines its goals and strategies for best supporting its students. The department requires school districts to bring together a diverse group of stakeholders, including students, parents, teachers, and board members, to identify its priorities, action plans, and the metrics that will be utilized to evaluate progress toward goals that will be in place over a three-year span. 

Dr. Nicole Harvey, Assistant Superintendent, Elementary Education, gave a presentation about the work that is being done to create the Avon Grove School District Comprehensive Plan. She said the Strategic Initiative Committee, together with a diverse group of stakeholders, had just completed its second work session, and that six total will be held in order to devise the comprehensive plan. At the present time, the work session groups are identifying areas of strengths and weaknesses within the district by utilizing data garnered from educator and customer satisfaction surveys. She said they will create a list of specific priorities in later work sessions.

Once Avon Grove School District composes its comprehensive plan, the board must adopt it by March 2025. The proposed plan will be publicly available on the school district page of the Avongrove.org website so that the public can provide input for the board to consider prior to adoption of the plan. Once adopted, the comprehensive plan will be in place through the end of the school year in 2028.

After the comprehensive plan presentation, the school board meeting focused on the budget. Dan Carsley, the district’s director of business administration/CFO, gave a presentation on how the Pennsylvania state education budget, approved in July, will affect the Avon Grove School District 2024-25 school year budget, which was approved in June.  

Carsley announced that the state budget has provided Avon Grove School District with additional revenue of $320,000 for basic education funding, $118,000 to reimburse the district for those students who opted to attend charter schools, $344,000 for special education, and additional monies under the Ready to Learn Block Grant, funds which Avon Grove has mainly used to offset full-day kindergarten costs but which now will be sufficient to also cover mental health services and some other services. 

He noted that while the state has provided additional funding for the district, Avon Grove’s original budget remains in place. The district will benefit from the state funds, however, because that money will offset those funds that were originally slated to come out of the usage of the fund balance.

Superintendent of Schools M. Christopher Marchese, Ed.D., cautioned the board that while the recent state budget did create additional revenues for the district, it was a unique budget, and not one that they will likely be able to rely on to continue into the future.  

He said, “I think it would be prudent for the district and the board to look at each fiscal planning year independent of each other and recognize that there can be challenges, particularly with state revenues, in the future.”

Finally, the board meeting turned to the matter of roof replacement for the Fred S. Engle building, which is owned by the district but leased to the Chester County Intermediate Unit (CCIU). This building is the former home of Avon Grove’s middle school, which moved into the former Avon Grove High School after a new high school was constructed. 

The Avon Grove School District is responsible for the roof of the Fred S. Engle building, as well as the parking lot, and during a renovation process of the structure, it was uncovered that the roof needs to be entirely replaced. The cost of the project is projected to be between $2.2-$2.5 million. The project should be completed by May 2025 and should not be disruptive to the students the CCIU will have in the building. The funds to cover this replacement will come out of the district’s capital fund.

Said Superintendent Marchese, “We have benefited from some surpluses in the general fund budget, and we have made the commitment to transfer those surpluses to the capital projects fund to feed some of these long-term capital needs for the district that were neglected for many, many years. We will do it in a way that is efficient, economical, and right for the taxpayers of the community.”