Chartiers-Houston to be reimbursed for renovation
Exterior of the new Chartiers-Houston High School sports facility behind the high school Tuesday.
Exterior of Chartiers-Houston High School on Pike Street in Chartiers Township Tuesday
Chartiers-Houston School District will receive nearly $672,000 in state funding for construction reimbursements.
The district took on an $18 million high school renovation project in 2010 and was not immediately reimbursed by the state Department of Education’s Planning and Construction Workbook, or PlanCon. Pennsylvania’s strained budget ultimately led to a moratorium on the program.
PlanCon is an 11-step process schools use for partial reimbursement from the state for school construction and renovation projects.
The hold on reimbursements was lifted over the summer when the state’s General Assembly increased the allocation to PlanCon by $10 million and eliminated the deficit. Last week, Gov. Tom Corbett’s administration announced 41 schools in Pennsylvania would be reimbursed with more than $21.6 million.
Chartiers-Houston is the only school district to be reimbursed in Washington and Greene counties. Business Manager Don Bennett said it was a long time coming.
“What we were missing was roughly about $250,000 a year for reimbursement,” Bennett said. “So needless to say, that was revenue we couldn’t rely on, so we had to make that up through our fund balance.”
Bennett said the reimbursement money will be put back into the fund balance “in hopes that we won’t have to raise taxes or millage as much in the future.”
The district is currently replacing boilers at Allison Park Elementary School, but the project did not qualify for PlanCon funds because it cost less than $500,000.
Acting Secretary of Education Carolyn Dumaresq said she hopes the department will be able to approve additional projects throughout the fiscal year as more funding becomes available.
“This much-needed funding will help to free up dollars that can be directed into the classroom to support student achievement,” Dumaresq said in a news release.
Canon-McMillan School District is currently going through the PlanCon process to construct a new elementary school and Ringgold is doing the same to build a middle school.