Jim Thorpe Area School District is running a deficit of several million dollars, and Superintendent Robert Presley is asking residents and staff to help find a way out of it.

Presley told the school board Wednesday he is forming a budget committee that will examine district spending line by line.

“I would be putting out a message to staff and families if you would be interested in sitting on a small committee to really take a look at our budget and find out where we are responsible for spending, where we can find savings,” Presley said. “We currently run a several million dollar deficit that is not going to get taken care of by cutting supplies. But we will have to do something to correct that moving forward.”

Help from Harrisburg is unlikely, he said.

The state set the district’s Act 1 index at 3.6% for the 2027-28 school year. Districts with a state aid ratio of 0.4 or higher receive a bump that lets them raise taxes beyond the base index. Jim Thorpe’s aid ratio sits at roughly 0.386, which Presley said ranks fourth in the Carbon Lehigh Intermediate Unit.

The reason comes down to how Pennsylvania measures wealth.

“Jim Thorpe School District is considered the 86th richest district out of 501 in the state because we have high property values, which account for 60% of the formula,” Presley said. “Even if we have low income values, they only count for 40% of the formula.”

The consequences stack up across the budget.

“With that aid ratio, we have a hard time getting grants,” Presley said. “We get no adequacy funding. We see very small increases in basic education funding.”

Transportation reimbursement fell $100,000 this year, he said, because that formula divides property values by weighted average daily membership. Rising property values paired with declining enrollment push the district further down the list.

“According to the state, we are in the top 100 wealthiest districts in the state, but in reality, that’s not the case. That’s the way the formula is set up,” Presley said.

The Pennsylvania School Boards Association has taken notice. Presley said the organization has used Jim Thorpe as a case study.

He intends to press the issue in Harrisburg. His PSBA fellowship requires an advocacy project, and he has chosen the aid ratio.

“That will be my advocacy project — to talk to senators and come up with a project about how that formula is not fair to districts such as ours, to have high property values but lower incomes,” Presley said.