Kiski Area is one of 500 public school districts in Pennsylvania. Most of what I knew about KASD came from local newspapers as well as students and employees of the district. The remainder of what I knew was that my property taxes for the school generally went up - some years significantly.
It was the 10.4% increase in my 2004 Washington Township school property taxes followed by another 8.2% increase in 2005 that finally got my attention. Not enough to do something immediately, but enough to react when the most recent school closures and building programs started making news. Déjà vu all over again as the great Yogi Berra once said.
The local newspaper does cover school board meetings and school district issues (in addition to student activities). But, by nature, news is focused on an event, not a comprehensive view of what is happening.
And a newspaper is no longer delivered throughout the district. So unless you have the electronic subscription, you may have little idea what is happening.
No news is not necessarily good news in this case.
Some information is available on the internet - mostly budget totals, teacher salary ranges, and local household income ranges. In addition, the PA Department of Education has performance metrics available about Kiski Area (and the other school districts). These metrics are periodically published by local papers to compare the performance of area school districts.
So even though I knew how much I was contributing in property taxes, there was a lot I didn't know about Kiski Area. Even more frustrating, was where to find answers to my questions. For example,
At each school board meeting, attendees are given a handout with the agenda for the meeting. Under the Citizen's Comments agenda items (there are 2), it states "The intention of the audience of citizens is for the Board to listen to you. We will carefully weigh your comments, but may not engage in dialog, which is not the intended purpose of the opportunity."
You can ask a question. The board may respond.
Or not.
At an information meeting (April 10, 2013) after a resident read a statement regarding curriculum, the board president made it clear there would be no response because (the school board meeting) was not the place for dialog and the president felt the comments were only an opinion. Which leads to the real question.
Where and when do residents and taxpayers dialog with the Kiski Area School Board?
One goal of Kiski-Area-Info is to gather the information related to the above questions and
make it readily available to the residents and taxpayers of the
communities supporting Kiski Area School District.
Another goal is to foster dialog with the people elected by area residents to represent them.
This site is not a publication of the Kiski Area School District or School Board.
WASHINGTON TWP VOTERS
Please note that 2 polling locations have changed.
If you voted at the Municipal Building, you will now vote at the Washington Twp Fire Hall.
If you voted at the elementary school, you will now vote at the Municipal Building.
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