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MCTI budget costs decrease for Pleasant Valley

Pleasant Valley School District is looking at a drop of $18,000 it contributes to the Monroe Career and Technical Institute for next school year.

Dennis Virga, director of Monroe Career and Technical Institute, presented the budget to the Pleasant Valley School Board during their planning meeting on Monday night. The school board will vote on the MCTI budget at their meeting later this month.

There are several reasons for the decrease, Virga said. One reason is enrollment.

MCTI is financially supported by the four school districts it serves in Monroe County: East Stroudsburg, Stroudsburg, Pleasant Valley and Pocono Mountain.

The percentage each school district contributes is based on how many students they send to MCTI.

Since enrollment has dropped slightly, so has the amount the school district is asked to contribute toward MCTI’s operating budget. That amount is $1,929,955 for the 2023-2024 school year. The district contributed $1,948,135 this year.

Virga said that enrollment in all four school districts has dropped, but the number of students applying for the technical school continues to increase.

“In Monroe County, it was about a 21% drop in enrollment as a whole at the high school level,” Virga said. “We’ve seen a 16% increase.”

Pleasant Valley doesn’t send the most students to MCTI, but it does send the highest percentage of students compared to the number of students enrolled at the high school.

According to a chart Virga presented, enrollment from PVHS was 10.89% of the student population in 2013-2014. It is now up to 15.41%.

Another reason for the slight decrease in the contribution is because MCTI has a small excess this year in its budget.

Because three of the four school districts were in the middle of contract negotiations during the time MCTI was drafting its budget, they overestimated how much they would need for salaries. They didn’t want to be short and have to come back to the school districts for more money, Virga said.