Penn Hills School District's proposed budget includes no tax increase

Residents in the Penn Hills School District won’t be seeing a change in their real estate taxes for the upcoming school year.

The school directors approved a proposed 2025-26 budget with no tax hike and no cuts to programs or staffing in a unananimous vote May 14.

John Zahorchak, the district’s business manager, said the budget is balanced with revenues and expenditures of just over $106 million. Each increased about $3 million from last school year. Zahorchak said most of the expenditure increase can be attributed to cyber charter school costs — a state mandated cost.

“About $2.2 million of the $3 million is cyber charter school tuition,” he said.

He said there also was a 5.7% increase in health care costs.

Millage is set to stay at 30.5965, with property owners with a median assessed property value of $76,500 paying $2,340.63.

Zahorchak said the district is planning to focus on rebuilding its capital fund balance once current projects are completed. The road around Linton Middle School will be repaved this summer.

The proposed budget is subject to any changes. Zahorchak said the proposal includes all estimated revenue from the state’s proposed budget.

“Assuming that everything gets passed (at the state level), we’ll be able to put aside $850,000 for future capital needs,” he said. “That’s all based on the assumption that the state budget’s going to get passed as proposed. If it doesn’t get passed as proposed, we’re going to have to reconfigure how we’re putting together our budget.”