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Admiral Peary committee weighs reserve fund

EBENSBURG — The Admiral Peary Area Vo-Tech Joint Operating Committee has an important decision to make next month as it considers whether to create a capital reserve fund balance for the technical school’s 2025-26 operating budget.

During a regular meeting Thursday night, Mike Revesz, the school’s business manager, said Admiral Peary doesn’t need any capital improvements currently, but if there’s a leak on the roof or if one of the school’s heating units goes down, there’s nothing in place to address those problems.

“Right now we don’t carry reserves, so if something like that were to happen where we have a $100,000 problem, we would have to come back to this board to get the funding,” Revesz said. “We’re trying to create a small reserve so that we can address problems just from normal operations. We’re trying to be prudent about it.”

According to the committee’s second vice chairperson Michael Sheehan, who represents the Penn Cambria School District, the technical school has $87,831 in the treasurer’s report listed as a capital reserve fund balance. But chief school administrator Jason Moore, Central Cambria’s superintendent, said that funding is not labeled for capital reserves and is an unallocated fund balance.

In February, the committee is set to vote on a preliminary assumption agreement that will determine how much each of the sending school districts will pay for student enrollment. There are two scenarios being considered, one with and one without a new capital reserve fund, Revesz said.

In both scenarios, the cost per student will increase. Revesz said the increase is necessary because many of the sending schools are experiencing a decline in enrollment.

“We all know that enrollments are down. We want to take a more conservative approach and project less kids,” Revesz said. “When you have less kids, the cost of enrollment goes up.”

Currently, each of the eight sending school districts — Blacklick Valley, Cambria Heights, Central Cambria, Conemaugh Valley, Harmony Area, Northern Cambria, Penn Cambria and Portage Area — pay $6,050 per student.

Revesz said the committee budgeted for 700 students last year, but the school’s actual enrollment for 2024-25 was 687 students. He said the school received some unexpected state funding and decided to give some extra money from the surplus back to the districts instead of holding it for reserves.

That’s a big deal for districts like Penn Cambria that are undergoing capital improvement projects themselves.

“I think that is a good move for everybody,” Sheehan said. “It’s good for us because of our budgetary restrictions right now. It’s going to be huge to get that back and be able to budget going forward and not having to take the hit.”

Revesz said the school plans to budget for 675 students in 2025-26. Depending on which scenario the committee decides to move forward with, the cost per student could increase to $6,300 per student or $6,400 per student, he said.

At $6,300, the school would generate about $4.25 million, an increase of $17,500 from last year’s budget. Setting the rate at $6,400 would generate approximately $4.32 million for the school, which is $85,000 more than last year’s budget.

“The decision of the board overall if we decide to do a reserve fund will dictate how much it goes up,” Sheehan said, noting the increase is still going to have a “pretty substantial impact” on Penn Cambria, which sends about 160 students to the technical school.

“Hopefully we keep the enrollment up overall, but right now it’s too early to tell,” Sheehan said. “Hopefully we can make it work to benefit our students and keep sending them.”

Joe Luther, Admiral Peary’s executive director, said, overall, the declining enrollment at schools is “not alarming yet” for career and technical education.

“The kids are wanting to come to career and tech-ed. They’re really starting to gain interest in it,” Luther said, adding the school is a “viable resource” for students to spend less money for education and earn employment opportunities.

Luther said Admiral Peary’s electrical, welding and automotive diesel programs are “bursting at the seams” with interest from students.

“We just want to be proactive as we start to see the enrollment from our home schools starting to decline, eventually you can start to see that trickle into Admiral Peary,” he said.

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