Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett’s budget proposals will have painful impacts for the Unionville Chadds Ford School District. The governor’s recently released budget proposal reduces state funding to the school district by nearly $500,000.

“There is bad news from Harrisburg. Our tough budget situation is getting tougher,” school board President Timotha Trigg said during the March 14 work session.

The focus of the March work session was a review of the executive summary of the recently submitted Transportation Services Advisory report that the school district funded to obtain expert operational review of U-CF transportation. A copy of this report can be found at http://www.ucfsd.org/`boarddocs.

The findings of the TSA report said substantial savings would be possible if the school district choose to outsource transportation. The Key recommendation of the TSA report said:

“We recommend that the District pursue all options to determine if in-house operating and labor cost savings may be available to allow the District-run program to be competitive in both the near and long term. Concurrent with the in-house options review, since it appears that the potential for savings may be significant through outsourcing, we recommend that the District develop high quality bid/RFP specifications and publish these this Spring with consideration for a conversion during the 2011-2012 school year.”

The TSA Executive Summary of labor aspects of school district transportation said:

“The District is providing full-time employee benefits to persons who are effectively part-time. Although the employees meet the District’s definition of full-time, they only work 10 months a year, and less than 40 hours per week.

We recommend that the District review the wage and benefit package to create a program that better represents the needs of a transportation program. This may require a separate set of benefits for just transportation employees.

The projected significant increase in the PSERS contribution rate poses a heavy burden on the cost of transportation.”

School Board Director Keith Knauss, urged fellow board members, school district administrators and employees to pursue parallel paths including outsourcing school district (similar to 14 other Chester County school districts) and identification of additional operational cost savings to lower the transportation costs to be competitive with the outsourcing alternative.

School Board Director Paul Price has posted his personal comments and analysis of the TSA school bus transportation report on YouTube.

At the work session Price said, “We now pay well above market total compensation in using District employees to provide non-teaching services. Our primary function is to provide a quality education to our community’s children. Every dollar of overspending on anything else will, by definition, have to come out of the educational process”

School Superintendent Sharon Parker made her own point: “While the TSA transportation outsourcing recommendation will be carefully reviewed, the school district transpiration and support staff employees are valued and are extremely professional in the services they provide.”

School Board Director Frank Murphy said, “We want to avoid balkanization of the school district employees. We are looking for shared sacrifice”.

Other business

• On April 9 Unionville High School will host a family pasta dinner event to raise funds for the United Way. Details for this community event are posted on the school district and high school websites.

• The school year has been extended to Thursday, June 16 to add a make-up day caused when heavy rain and road flooding forced the district to cancel classes on Friday, March 11.

• The March 21 school board meeting will be held 7:30 p.m. at Pocopson Elementary School.