When Superintendent Jason Moser arrived at the Lehighton Area School District, roughly 70 students were enrolled in outside behavioral and special education placements. Behavioral Health Associates placements alone cost the district around $1 million. This year that BHA figure has ballooned to nearly $2.9 million, the district has blown past its own budget for those services by more than $1 million, and the overrun is now forcing the board to reassign funds to cover the gap.

Monday night Moser laid out the most detailed public account yet of how the district got here and what he intends to do about it.

Business Administrator Matthew Lentz walked the board through the five-year cost progression.

“BHA costs go back to 2022 — they were around $1 million. In 2023 they were $1.4 million. In 2024 they hit $2.4 million, and then in 2024-25 they hit $3.4 million,” Lentz said. “The budget for 2025-26 was developed without having that actual, and so the budget was $1.7 million, and we’re actually at $2.8 million.”

The district cut checks for every dollar of that, he added.

“What we’re talking about is actual expenditures that we’ve paid to BHA yearly,” Lentz said.

The board voted 6-3 Monday night to assign just over $1 million from the district’s fund balance to cover the current year’s shortfall — the precise gap between the $1,783,805 that was budgeted for Behavioral Health Associates services and the $2,800,901 in actual year-to-date costs. Board members David Bradley, Joy Beers and Jeremy Glaush voted no, noting the money could be paid without moving it from the unassigned fund balance.

The 2026-27 general fund budget, also adopted Monday, projects $11,959,247 for special programs — nearly a quarter of the district’s entire $51.5 million spending plan — with $4,468,580 budgeted in purchased professional and technical services covering outside placement tuition, related services and transportation for students in BHA and Carbon Lehigh Intermediate Unit programs. That figure alone is nearly double what was budgeted for those same services the prior year.

“We did not have a handle budgetarily on where those numbers realistically stood over the past several years,” Moser said. “It has created a significant gap in our budget, and we are running truly in 2025-26 in a significant deficit.”

He described the $1 million fund balance assignment as unavoidable.

“To pretend that that money was going to be in our fund balance once we pay all those bills would simply be disingenuous,” Moser said. “It will not be. We will have to pay those bills.”

Plan for the future

Moser’s plan to stop the bleeding relies on one core principle: replicate inside the district the services students are currently being shipped out to receive. The student count tells the story of the work already done.

“I believe the number of students enrolled in BHA at the beginning of this school year was 47,” Moser said, “and what we have planned for the beginning of next year is down to, I believe, 23 students.”

Two emotional support classrooms added at the elementary center this year have already absorbed students who previously would have gone to outside placements, Moser said. A high school emotional support teaching position is coming for next year. An autistic support classroom teacher at the elementary level will be hired shortly, with middle and high school equivalents to follow. The logic is to build a continuum from the ground up, so that students placed in the elementary program can move through the district rather than aging into higher-cost outside placements. “We are making sure that our continuum of service doesn’t go from regular education to a BHA placement or an IU placement — that there are stops in between where you find the right level of support that an individual student actually needs to be successful in school — and you exhaust all those internal options before you look to the outside,” Moser said.

He was equally direct about the limits of how fast the pullback can happen, particularly for students with autism who have spent years in the same environment.

“You do not take a kid out of a placement in which they are incredibly comfortable and have been for eight or nine years and just say, you are coming back here,” Moser said. “That will not be good for the student first and foremost, and it won’t be good for the district at large. You have to be very thoughtful and methodical about how you do this.”

His benchmark is his previous district, Danville, which he described as comparable in size and demographics to Lehighton at roughly 2,200 students. That district had a full continuum of emotional support, autistic support and life skills classrooms at every level and sent only 14 students to outside placements.

“When I got (to Lehighton) and the number was almost 70, I identified it immediately as something we need to do something about,” Moser said. “I am confident that two years from now our conversation around our outplacements is going to be drastically different.”

Ryan Bowman, a district resident, challenged Moser directly on costs and oversight Monday night.

“I think collectively we have to move those kids back into the district,” Bowman said. “It may cost us a few dollars more, but I think we’re getting the wool pulled over our eyes real fast here. Based on the numbers that have been presented over the years, I think someone’s taking full advantage of us — just my opinion, I can’t prove it.”

Moser said the plan will bear out within two years.

“There is no reason why we cannot replicate the same level of services for many of those students who we were previously sending into outside placements,” he said. “We have a lot of work to do, and I believe we are on the right path.”