Faced with a $2 million gap between expenses and revenue in the 2015-16 school year budget, Tamaqua Area School District may have to make a very unpopular decision moving students from Rush Township Elementary School.

During a school board meeting Tuesday, directors reviewed the results of a facilities' survey of the district's elementary school facilities and programs offered on the elementary and secondary levels.The district has three elementary schools, in Tamaqua, West Penn Township and Rush Township.The facilities report identified four key issues:• The growth of the district's special education programs. Tamaqua Area School District has a special education population which is 6 percent higher than the state average.• The corresponding expenses to maintain the special education programs.• The delivery of programs at district facilities, and at out-of-district facilities.• The growing expense of transporting Tamaqua students to out-of-district facilities.The district's preliminary budget, slated to be approved during a meeting June 23, starts with a beginning fund balance of $3.4 million.Revenues are projected to be $27.2 million, and expenses $29.2 million. To balance the budget, the district plans to take $2 million from the fund balance, taking it to about $1.4 million."This is not something the district wants to do nor is it something that the district is definitely going to do," Superintendent Carol Makuta said after the meeting, referring to moving students from Rush Elementary School. "It's something that we must consider."According to the facilities report, there are several options.In each of the options, the first step is to move the English as a Second Language and Elementary Gifted Programs from the Rush and Tamaqua elementary schools to West Penn Elementary School, and to move the Rush Elementary School population to Tamaqua Elementary School.The next potential steps vary as to what happens to the Rush Township Elementary School building, if it winds up empty of students.If that's the case, the district would cooperate with other alternate educational programs or interested parties to occupy Rush, or sell Rush."Currently the teachers for English as a Second Language and Gifted Programs are traveling to five different sites," Makuta said.District administators have been studying the elementary schools and programs for the past two years, while developing the facilities study.