Public school districts in Pennsylvania are facing a new animal as part of their 2014-15 financial audits.

For the first time, the Governmental Accounting Standards Board is requiring districts to record pension liability on their financial statements.In Lehighton Area School District, one of many local districts to recently receive their audits for the year ending June 30, 2015, that long-term pension liability equates to $45.5 million."What it's basically saying is that if you closed operations today, this is what it takes to fund the rest of the pensions for past, present and future retirees," Lehighton Business Manager Brian Feick said."What we're really talking about though is this amount of money over a time period of 40-plus years. The state is trying to treat schools more like a private institution. Everyone knew it was coming, it just stands out because it is the first time it's showing up like this on the audit."What the change means for school audits is that every district's net position will be in the red.Lehighton's net position, for example, went to $11.34 million in the red after 2014-15."The unfunded pension liability is out of the district's control and could be misrepresented to the public," board member Gloria Bowman said at the finance meeting. "Everyone is trying to figure out pension reform. Everyone is in the same boat."Don Pierce of Maillie LLC presented Lehighton's finance report at a March 7 committee meeting. Mallie audits 25 school districts across the state.Lehighton's general fund revenue ended the fiscal year at $38.6 million, 6.5 percent more than was estimated in the district budget."This was mainly due to a refund of the prior year's expenditures from the health insurance trust that the district joined in 2012," the auditors reported. "The district had positive experience with claims and the reserves could be returned."Expenses were up 4.6 percent from the prior year to $37.8 million, largely due to capital projects, including an asbestos abatement at the middle school.Auditors attributed the remaining increase to retirement contributions.Actual expenditures were 0.98 percent less than what was budgeted."This was not attributed to any one factor, except for tight monitoring of all budgets," the audit concluded.Revenue from taxes was down in 2014-15, something Feick attributed to a change in Lehighton's collection agency."We switched to Portnoff Law Associates two years ago and they aggressively went after our delinquent taxes, which resulted in a high revenue number for that year," Feick said.The district's PSERS contribution will continue to be the elephant in the room when finances are discussed. According to the PSERS website, employer contributions will be 29.69 percent in 2016-17 and 30.62 percent in 2017-18."The pension is the big thing out there, but despite that we're happy to still be presenting a budget for 2016-17 that has no tax increase for our residents," Feick said.