It's Not Too Late

East Penn should reconsider it's $95 million "all-in" plan for realignment

photo from wikipedia.org

The East Penn School District unveiled a financial plan last week to spend almost $95 million dollars to "realign" the elementary and secondary schools. The plan is to take 5th graders out of our seven elementary schools and bus them all to a reconfigured Eyer Middle School, along with all 6th graders district-wide. All 7th and 8th graders would then be bused to a reconfigured Lower Macungie Middle School.

The reasons the district wants to do this were laid out for the public in October 2023, as a solution to predicted enrollment increases at the elementary schools and growing inequalities between the middle schools.

While acknowledging the good reasons this plan was first considered, the enormous amount of work and expertise that has gone into this plan over the last eighteen months, as well as the significant money already spent to work out some of the details, I believe the plan as presently formulated is a mistake. The financial cost is so large that it will be difficult or impossible to correct the mistake down the road. And it's a mistake that will hamstring the district's ability to solve other known problems anytime soon. My opinion is based on watching all five presentations that have been made to the board since this option was first contemplated in the fall of 2023, reviewing all the documents, spreadsheets, and sketch plans that have been made publicly available, and talking to teachers, administrators, and parents who have been both inside and outside the planning process.

Here's why I've come to this conclusion:

• The price tag for this alignment has mushroomed from an estimated $66 million when the school board initially green-lighted it to almost $95 million today (a 44% jump). Look at it this way: if you want to buy a new home, and find one you like for $285,000, but then discover that same home is actually going to cost $410,000 instead, I think it makes sense to re-evaluate your decision to buy that particular house. This is true even if it's a home that works well for your family and you've put time and effort into finding it and planning your move. And many more families can afford a $285,000 home than can afford a $410,000 one. This is similar to the re-evaluation the district and board face today with the realignment plan. It is really expensive, and gotten a lot MORE expensive, since they first began planning it.

• This 44% increase still probably doesn't account for all the costs. For example, the construction manager for the project told the board there is no provision in the budget for the new tariffs on building materials like steel and aluminum. I spoke to several construction engineers at different firms about this; all of them told me construction prices would be impacted by tariffs, with estimates ranging from an additional 5% to 30% of the materials cost. Other elements of the financial plan, from the assumption that busing costs won't increase for the next six years to the assumption federal funding will continue to increase, suggest the final bill will come in significantly more than the current $94.8 million.

• Borrowing the amount of money needed for the project will require the district to raise taxes to the legal maximum annually "for the foreseeable future" (and for at least the next five years in a row). Known as the Act 1 Index, estimates for this legal maximum during those years range from 3.1% to 3.6%. As a point of comparison, the district has raised taxes to this legal maximum only three times in the past decade.

• Even with this borrowing and these tax increases, the district will have to cut the amount they spend maintaining and improving other facilities in the district from $8 million to $6.5 million annually to make this plan work. That's almost 19% less for other building needs. These cuts will impact all the students, teachers, and staff in other buildings, and almost certainly cost the district more money than it saves in the long run as these buildings require renovation or replacement of their own down the road.

• The problem this plan is designed to fix -- significant growth in the number of students in the district -- is looking like less of a problem than originally feared when the plan was first formulated. The demographic study the district is using for its enrollment estimates predicted a growth of 139 students in kindergarten through 5th grade between 2023 and 2025. In reality, that growth has only been about 40 students, according to school board member Bill Whitney. The study's estimates for changes in middle school enrollment were even more off. With the scope of the enrollment problem significantly smaller than the district originally anticipated, I think the district needs to consider solutions that are also significantly smaller.

• The cost of the project has also meant a big chunk of the educational benefits promised from this plan are already on the chopping block. The district's vision of the benefits of realignment to our kids rests to a large degree on spending an additional $6.3 million annually on new teachers, student advisors, and other support staff. But even with all the borrowing, the tax increases, and cuts to other capital projects for this plan, they've also had to eliminate almost half (46%) of the dollars earmarked for this hiring. There is no way such a significant cut won't impact the quality of the programs this realignment was originally envisioned to offer.

• Last (but not least): The high school is well known to be overcrowded, understaffed, and in need of modernization. Indeed, the administration's presentation laying out district needs gave as much focus to the high school as it did the elementary and middle schools, and included initial proposals for improving the high school that were every bit as detailed as those for the realignment proposal. I trust our district administration to know which problems we should prioritize; they're in the best position to make that call. But the realignment plan has ballooned to take up every available district resource for many years to come. So choosing to implement it also seems to be a choice to do nothing about the problems at the high school for a decade or even longer.

Did you skip my long bullet list above? Well the TLDR version is this: the realignment plan has exploded in cost even as its benefits have been reduced; it's too expensive, will likely get more expensive, will not deliver the promised benefits, and will leave the district unable to address other significant problems.

It is incredibly difficult to change course after devoting so much time, effort, and money to a project. I'm not against the principle of realigning the grades, and I'm impressed with the vision and energy that has been devoted to this realignment plan. This is not a call to do nothing. There have been plenty of times in the past where I've been in favor of spending more public dollars in order to improve our schools. But this is not the right plan nor the right price tag for where our district, and our community, is right now.

Learn more:

• Big Changes Coming to East Penn

• District presentations on the realignment plan:

  • October 23, 2023 (slides): statement of the problem and alternative solutions

  • October 28, 2024 (slides): overview and initial timelines for the plan

  • February 24, 2025 (slides): educational programming for the plan

  • May 12, 2025 (slides): designs for renovated and expanded Eyer and LMMS schools

  • June 9, 2025 (slides): costs and financing of the plan, and plan revisions