With less than a month to go before the final vote, district residents continue to speak against the recommended plan to build a new middle school. School Superintendent John Sanville made that recommendation during a special Jan. 6 meeting. People are still upset over school district spending and they’re pointing fingers at the board and the superintendent.
Eric Dietrick, of East Marlboro said East Marlboro is more than doubling property taxes there this year and he fears additional school taxes “are going to skyrocket in the coming years because of rising legal fees incurred by the district to defend itself, unnecessary expenses like electric school buses, and new capital expenses for a new middle school.”
With regard to the “rising legal fees,” he referenced “the costs the district has incurred to seemingly defend itself from various complaints by stakeholders that students were given an inappropriate survey that was sexual in nature without necessary prior consent from parents.”
[See https://chaddsfordlive.com/2024/06/11/parents-concerned-about-sex-survey/ and https://chaddsfordlive.com/2024/05/28/allegation-of-lies-and-misconduct-at-ucf/]
Dietrick continued saying his family and others need to be fiscally responsible and stay within their budgets because of inflation, and that the school district should be doing the same. And now, he said, is another expense.
“We are now unexpectedly having to pay tuition for private high school for our sons because this school district has made it clear that conservative Christian parents are not really welcome here anymore,” Dietrick said.
He rhetorically questioned how senior citizens in the district, living on fixed incomes could afford massive tax increases, and how can people continue to live in the district when municipalities and the school district continue to increase taxes.
Eric Gartner, of Chadds Ford Township, is also concerned with costs associated with a new middle school, high salaries, declining enrollment, and other taxes.
He said Unionville-Chadds Ford School District’s cost per student is $24,800, 13.4 percent higher than the state average and double that national average, and the average teacher’s salary is $94,700, which is 93 percent higher than the national average and double the state average. 
“We rank 13th best of 496 school districts in Pennsylvania. We’re the 117th largest…and our superintendent’s salary is number two at $322,000, double the state average,” he said.
He added that enrollment growth is 4.6 percent, with only Octorara and Coatesville districts being lower, while the Chester County average is 16.4 percent.
Gartner went on to say that he has several concerns regarding the feasibility study for Patton Middle School.
“[T]the stated reason for the sole source hire of a company to accomplish the study was their ‘long term history’ and ‘they know the building so well.’ It was no surprise that the study fit nicely into Dr. Sanville’s conclusion that we need a new School. My concern is sole source awards create the potential for inappropriate relationships that unduly influence outcomes,” he said.
“I was especially taken by what is being sold to taxpayers with the emphasis on natural light in order to optimize the learning. A $120 million price tag to build a school predicated on a 30-year life cycle for a building?”
He continued by saying there are other, less expensive ways of improving the lighting, such as using filters with natural light wavelengths, “all at a fraction of the cost of an entirely new building at taxpayer expense…As a board, you should understand how the rest of us try to make ends meet, especially with a looming county tax increase and the future incurred debt incorporating things like fulltime kindergarten. Increased taxes diminish our ability to do right by our kids.”
And he added that there are those who simply don’t believe that the $120 million estimated price tag for a new school will result in only a $42 per year tax increase, as has been suggested.
“The fact that there is still confusion, a lot of unanswered questions, and viable lighting solutions that are not in this study are of immense concern. The lack of real numbers to afford $120 million — and folks think the $42 answer you provided will cover this — is disturbing. Several taxpayers have voiced concerns that the real numbers will be thousands higher in increased annual taxes, yet I hear crickets in response from this board. Unless you are a trust fund baby or a member of the elite, this is beyond the reach of the average taxpayer,” he said
Another Chadds Ford Township resident, Debbie Dean, also expressed concern over the costs associated with the proposed new school, and said it seems that the decision [not yet final] to replace Patton is based on two groups, teachers and students. But it appears, she said, that the taxpayer is the missing stakeholder in the conversation.
Dean said she researched how taxpayers fund school decisions.
“Homeowners, through their school taxes, pay approximately 75 to 77 percent every annual school budget. When examining Unionville-Chadds Ford School annual school budgets from 2018 to 2024, taxpayers funded the school district with more than a half-billion dollars. That’s correct, a total of $501,805,203,” she said.
Dean continued saying that during the same seven-year period, board members who campaigned on fiscal responsibility, often unanimously, voted to spend more than $661 million, “which includes millions currently held in the unreserved fund balance.”
According to the Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy,” she added, “Unionville-Chadds Ford School District has the highest spending per student across all Chester County school districts…and they spent $24,811, which is 13 percent higher than the average state spending per student, and the fourth highest for instruction per student at $14,391, which is 11 percent higher than the state average.”
She added that U-CF has the second smallest student enrollment of the 10 Chester County districts, “but has the second highest salaried superintendent in all of Pennsylvania.”
Dean said Sanville received a salary of $322,000 in 2024 and, when adding 2024 benefit expenses of almost $98,000, “He received a compensation package for nearly $420,000…That’s more than the president of the United States… and second only to Dr. Tony Watlington who is the superintendent in Philadelphia.”
During the same 2018-2024 period, she said, Sanville was paid more than $2 million.
She wants the school board to provide an analysis of the tax increases associated with each of the three options — maintain, renovate, or replace — for Patton.
“Taxpayers want to know how their taxes may increase, and when. Why the lack of transparency?”
One person did speak out in favor of a new building. A Pocopson Township resident, whose first name is Jordan but whose last name could not be heard clearly, praised the education the district has been giving his children, and said a new middle school to replace Patton is necessary. He doesn’t want the other options of either maintain or renovate, but “I think we should be transparent about what the true costs are but let’s do the right thing.”
Other business
During the voting portion of the meeting, school directors voted to spend $362,819 for a public water connection at Chadds Ford Elementary School, and $774,000 to demolish and rebuild the wastewater treatment plant at CFES.
In addition, they voted to spend $15,892 for a new Rough Terrain Vehicle for the grounds department, and another $141,990 for two nine-passenger buses.
The votes were unanimous.
About Rich Schwartzman
Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.
(10 votes, average: 4.60 out of 5)
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Declining enrollments and increasing school taxes? UCF taxpayers demand and deserve fiscal responsibility, full accountability and transparency. I share the comment made at the meeting about senior citizens being unfairly burdened by out of control spending by the school district. Time for change!