The Panther Valley School District needs the state to come through with funding to move forward with any building or renovation plan, its superintendent said after hearing a plan for a new elementary school.

KCBA Architects of Center Valley presented its building study and recommendations to the board Wednesday night. A new elementary school with a reconfiguration of grades in the existing schools was recommended.

The recommendation carries a price tag of $67.5 million, just for the new school which would be located at the existing school complex off Route 209 in Summit Hill.

The Basic Education Funding Commission last week narrowly passed a report with the governor’s approval last week that said Panther Valley is underfunded by more than $17 million a year, Superintendent Dave McAndrew said.

“Hopefully, we’ll see some of that money,” he said. “We’re well aware of our financial issue at this point. The only way we would move ahead with the process of building would be if we saw a significant increase in funding from the state, or if we were able to secure construction grants.

“We know we can’t put this on the local taxpayers at this point. We’re already very highly taxed,” McAndrew said. “So, we will be looking for grants. We’ll be looking for state funding.

“We’re hoping that our local legislators come through with some of their promises and that $17 million a year we would see, and we could put that directly into, not only buildings, but more importantly, our kids’ education.”

McAndrew said the district needs to be able to lower class sizes, but can’t fix that problem with no place to put the kids with growing enrollment.

The state also set aside $300 million a year for construction projects, which the district would like to tap into as well, he said.

Both McAndrew and business manager Jesse Walck thanked Shannon Abraham and Mike Kelly of KCBA Architects for their work on the feasibility study, but now it comes down to getting funding from the state to move forward.

Board President Daniel Matika echoed McAndrew’s comments, saying that they can’t rely on local taxpayers to fund a new school.

“We won’t put it on the taxpayers,” he said. “It’s going to be strictly on our state money or grants. They’re overtaxed the way it is. We can’t do that again to the taxpayers.”

Some board members called out local legislators, who aren’t in favor of giving more funding to underfunded districts, such as Panther Valley.

“We have local legislators who are against this. They don’t want to give us the money,” board member Michael Alabovitz said. “They would rather give to private schools, to charter schools or whoever.

“I’ll call names out. Sen. (David) Argall, he’s against this. He’s against giving us the money the judge said we deserve,” he said. “If anyone sees him or has any contact with him, ask him about it.

“That funding would benefit every school district in this county for certain,” Alabovtiz said. “For far too long we’ve been shortchanged when it came to state funding. It’s been unfair.”

Another board member, Pat Leonzi, said that Argall is supposed to be representing the Panther Valley as its state representative, and that he voted against giving the district the needed funding.

Board member Anthony DeMarco said that Argall wasn’t even present in the Capitol when the Basic Education Funding Commission voted. Argall, who serves on the commission, voted by proxy.

“Our guy is supposed to be doing good for us, and voting against it is a big slap in the face,” Leonzi said.

People will have to hold him accountable at the polls, Alabovitz said.

Argall when reached for comment on Thursday morning said in a statement that both Democrats and Republicans on the commission agreed that many schools did need more funding.,

“Despite the fact that a clear consensus was not reached by the Basic Education Funding Commission, there was bipartisan agreement that more education funding is needed for many schools,” Argall said. “ In fact, during this past budget the Senate, House, and Governor Shapiro worked in a bipartisan manner to approve the largest increase in basic education funding ever.

“However, we need to ensure that additional investments will benefit students. Simply dumping $6 to $10 billion of new taxpayer dollars into our current system, with no guarantee that it will actually improve student performance, is reckless and irresponsible,” the senator said.