The task of running one of the poorest school districts in the state is wearing on some members of the Panther Valley School Board.

Several of them directed their ire last Wednesday at state Sen. David Argall during a presentation by an architectural firm on either building a new elementary school in the district or building a new high school and renovating the current high school into an elementary school.

Either choice, and the likely one will be to build a new elementary school which is the cheaper option, runs into the tens of millions of dollars for a cash-strapped school district that had to sue the state to get adequate funding.

One thing that Superintendent Dave McAndrew and the board members made perfectly clear was that the cost of a project they choose will not be paid for by increasing taxes on district residents.

They made it clear that the funding has to come from the state or grants, or a combination of both.

McAndrew said, “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.”

Panther Valley was one of six school districts that successfully sued the state over education funding. The court ruled that the state has underfunded some districts in the state, Panther Valley being one of them, and the state must make up for the shortcoming.

Argall, a Republican and longtime lawmaker who is the chair of the Senate Education Committee, was part of a yearlong group that studied ways to meet the court’s ruling. Two reports emerged from that work, one by Democrats and one by Republicans. The Democrats’ report passed by an 8-7 vote, with Argall voting no. The report said the state owes $5.4 billion to make up for the lack of funding over the years and calls for that money to be phased in over five years.

Panther Valley School Board President Daniel Matika backed McAndrew, saying that “They’re overtaxed the way it is. We can’t do that again to the taxpayers.”

Several other board members voiced their frustrations with lawmakers.

“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. 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. For far too long we’ve been shortchanged when it came to state funding. It’s been unfair.”

Another board member, Pat Leonzi, lamented Argall’s role in education funding for public schools.

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

Argall issued a statement Thursday morning.

“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. In fact, during this past budget the Senate, House, and Gov. (Josh) 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 $6-10 billion of new taxpayer dollars into our current system, with no guarantee that it will actually improve student performance, is reckless and irresponsible.”

For the frustrated board members and taxpayers of the Panther Valley School, and other public school parents, Alabovitz summed it up when he said that people will have to hold him (Argall) accountable at the polls.

Voting, another way to voice one’s displeasure.

Tom DeSchriver/tdeschriver@tnonline.com