Penn Hills superintendent looks to academic growth

The tiles in Penn Hills Elementary School entryway were imported from Italy, a lavish reminder of the financial troubles the district found itself in after building two new schools without adequately identifying where the funds would come from a decade ago. (Photo by Oliver Morrison/PublicSource) by Oliver Morrison, PublicSource Nancy Hines, superintendent of the Penn … Continued The post Penn Hills superintendent looks to academic growth appeared first on New Pittsburgh Courier.

Penn Hills superintendent looks to academic growth

The tiles in Penn Hills Elementary School entryway were imported from Italy, a lavish reminder of the financial troubles the district found itself in after building two new schools without adequately identifying where the funds would come from a decade ago. (Photo by Oliver Morrison/PublicSource)

by Oliver Morrison, PublicSource

Nancy Hines, superintendent of the Penn Hills School District, didn’t have a scheduled meeting until lunchtime on Jan. 20, but by 10 a.m., she had already met with a half dozen people.

The common denominator across many of her morning interactions was the previous night’s board meeting. Several senior staff walked into her office to talk about the committee meetings. Their mood was upbeat: Eileen Navish, the business manager for the district, had given the most positive report in years. 

When Hines took over as superintendent in 2015, the district was around $19 million in the hole. But Navish reported that the district now had a positive balance of $7 million, an amount that could increase as the district receives additional COVID relief funds. 

The state auditor general first called out the district for financial mismanagement in 2016. Then, after two additional reports highlighting mismanagement, in 2019, Penn Hills was placed into financial distress by the state Department of Education, giving the state additional oversight.

The district’s property tax rate — above 30 mills —  is now the second highest in the county after six years of tax increases. The district has rebuilt its finances by refinancing bonds, securing grants from the state, selling old school buildings, raising taxes and cutting staff. It then received an additional windfall in the form of COVID relief funds.

Penn Hills has scrapped its way back to solvency and found itself with savings that would’ve taken much longer to accrue if not for the pandemic.

But signs of its financial past are still evident among staff: teachers have missed out on the typical annual raise on their salary schedules. Some furloughed staff have had to change the subjects they teach to find a permanent position within the district. And class sizes have increased — a symptom of the staffing cuts they’ve made to try to balance the budget. And the district will have to raise taxes or make further cuts to balance its budget once its federal relief money is spent.

Hines said she believes the district has finally achieved the kind of stability that will allow it to focus on some perennial problems — changing its approach to discipline and improving its academics, especially at the middle school.

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