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TYRONE -- The Tyrone Area School Board approved a resolution to not raise taxes above its Act 1 index of 7.5 % for the 2024-25 school year Tuesday night.
"That is the highest it has ever been," business administrator Faith Swanson said.
The current mileage is 7.5213 mills for Blair County residents, 27.0550 mills for Centre County, and 52.1199 mills for Huntingdon County.
Superintendent Leslie Estep said officials do not normally talk about Act 1 until December, but with the index amount being so high, they thought it would be a good idea to bring up the topic earlier.
Actual tax millage won't be set until June.
"Exceeding the index is very limited at this point," Swanson said.
If the costs for special education were to go up, the district could look at adding $3,000 more in revenue for next year's budget, she said.
Swanson said she remembered the index being 2.4% for the 2013-14 school year and was amazed by how much it has gone up since then.
"It is quite a large increase, which is representative of what is going on in the economy," she said.
The board also approved the purchase of two batting cages from Beacon Athletics at a total cost of $9,346.
One will be funded by the physical plant budget and the other by the athletics budget, Jordan Good, director of the physical plant said.
These are indoor batting cages and will be installed in the elementary school gym, he said.
Food service director Dani Dempsie reported that the schools were seeing a high amount of participation from students due to the free breakfast program.
She said the school district was also affected by the national milk carton shortage.
Because of the shortage, the schools were not able to get their usual shipment of the half pint cartons the last few weeks.
This resulted in cafeteria staff having to pour milk for secondary students, Dempsie said.
She said all of the cartons that the district did have at its warehouse were sent to the elementary school.
"We didn't want little ones running around with cups of milk," Dempsie said.
Pouring milk for the middle and high school students was going pretty well, she said.
Dempsie said the district will start to get more milk cartons today for the secondary schools.
"It will be mixed vendors; the dairies in the area came together so they could supply the schools first," she said.
Estep said the shortage was due to cardboard packaging being in short supply.
"Everyone was quick to remind us that it wasn't a milk shortage, just a packaging issue," she said.
Mirror Staff Writer Cati Keith is at 814-946-7535.