MILL HALL — The Keystone Central School District Board of Directors will be cutting it close with submission of its 2026-2027 budget to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, as it voted 3-5 on the final adoption of a $92 million budget at its voting session this week.

The move comes after the board heard from three local residents and received a petition with over 500 signatures from taxpayers in the community that were against the decision to consider a tax increase.

Members also spoke about their decision on whether to vote for or against the proposed budget.

Speaking against the choice were members John Miller, Manny Rodriguez, Chris Scaff, Shelby Bohartz and Roger Kshir.

Scaff noted he, along with members of the business office, have worked very hard to find ways to reduce expenditures in the budget and said, as chair of the finance committee, he would always look into ways to do so and avoid a tax increase.

He, again, pointed to the new budget formats created by Business Manager Joni MacIntyre and her team and how he’s repeatedly asked his fellow board members to review them and find other was to help in this endeavor. He noted only two others had done so.

“I cannot personally vote for a tax increase when we don’t have participation from people that can on this,” Scaff said.

He said it would be unfair to the taxpayers within the district to raise taxes while not doing everything possible to help the bottomline.

Rodriguez said he couldn’t agree to a tax increase as high as 3.5 percent.

“If it had to be done, it should have been done a little bit over a couple of years so the taxpayers didn’t get hit all at once,” he said.

He also talked about furloughs, a topic brought up repeatedly by members of the public and others.

He pointed to the staffing study completed by Superintendent Dr. Francis Redmon earlier in the year showed the ratio of students to teachers within the district was on-par with state standards.

“Furloughs are not necessarily the answer right now,” he said. “But I cannot vote for a 3.5 percent increase. We probably should have aimed a litte lower.”

Miller, who has been adamantly opposed to a tax increase throughout the process, said the board needs to stop worrying about pleasing only those within the school district and consider the taxpayers who elected them to their position.

Kshir told fellow board members he had been back and forth about the tax increase. However, seeing the changes made to the proposed Act 93 agreement made him settle on being against a tax increase of this size.

Board members who voted to adopt the proposed budget were President Elisabeth Lynch, Rich Wykoff and Jason Smith. Board member Dr. Bill Baldino was absent from Thursday’s meeting.

Lynch noted she’d previously voted against tax increases multiple times during her time on the board. She said this was because she didn’t trust the vision that was being laid out.

However, that’s changed.

“I know this board is committed to seeing this change,” she said.

She asked those against the proposed budget to reconsider, noting the need for a variety of data collection — such as another staffing study completed by a contractor — that the district would need funding to pay for. She said those fact-based, data collections would be an asset to help the board making sound financial decisions in the future.

“We do it this year and next year do the opposite. No tax increase,” she said.

Smith again pointed to the threat of receivership, as the district’s reserves — which would fall well below the 7 to 8 percent of the total budget PDE recommends in 2026-2027 — would create further issues later.

“I see there is pain and difficulty with this. But there is greater hurt and pain down the road that I can see if we don’t do this,” he said.

He emphasized the board must make decisions within the confines of the law, and said without a tax increase the district would be “playing chicken with the state.”

Wykoff said the board needed to make a choice regardless of personal feelings. He noted, as a senior within the district, he understood the financial strain these increases can cause.

However, he said he was looking it from the perspective of students.

“We can’t take anything away from the students,” he said.

Following its discussion and the vote to adopt the budget that failed, it was decided the board would take a different route.

A motion was made to direct MacIntyre to construct a budget with a 1.8 percent tax increase, rather than the 3.5 percent. The budget will be presented to the board for consideration and final adoption at a special meeting on Wednesday, June 24 at 5:30 p.m.

If adopted, it will be submitted to PDE just days before the June 30 deadline.