Lehighton Area School District will have a new tool for long-term financial planning following approval of a one-year agreement Monday night with Frontline Education for analytics software.

The agreement calls for the district to pay $10,250 for a Financial Planning Analytics Subscription running through June 30, 2023, and a one-time $2,200 setup fee.

“This software will help us do multiyear forecast scenarios,” LASD Business Administrator Edward Rarick said. “We can plug in different options and it will show us how a financial decision we make today will impact us three, four or even five years down the road.”

According to Frontline’s website, the software accelerates the development of a five-year forecast by populating data directly from the district’s accounting system and leveraging calculators in a powerful database engine that integrates historical perspective, trend analysis, and scenario comparisons.

Rarick said the system is used by many different school districts throughout the state and country.

“Should we have opted to do this kind of thing in-house, it would be extremely cumbersome, whereas this is really plug and play and then you have a lot of great information at your fingertips,” Rarick said.

Acting LASD Superintendent Jack Corby said he’s had a lot of experience with the forecasting software and called it an incredible asset for the district’s business office.

“You can plug in anything such as a projection for next year’s taxes or what you think you’ll be getting in state subsidy and it will take you out five years and give you that long-term impact,” Corby said. “There are a lot of things you can do with it that you just can’t do yourself.”

The Frontline agreement runs for one year, and Rarick said the district’s board of directors could evaluate whether it feels the software has value that would warrant continuing it at that time.