It may be early, but financial and political realities have made it necessary for the school board to be ready with a preliminary budget for 2016-17.

In fact, the lengthy Jan. 11 meeting several times skewed away from carefully delineated bullet points to bitter, frustrated lamentation toward Harrisburg and overall mishandling of education and budgeting in the commonwealth.

The early district budget draft is currently set at around $266 million, and administrators hope they’ve considered all possibilities considering there’s been no word on a state funding from last fiscal year, let alone the current one. Unfortunately, it currently appears about $15 million will have to be peeled away to avoid a deficit, most of which comes from pension increases and rising charter school obligations. Today, pensions accounts for more than $30 million of BASD’s total preliminary budget – an increase of more than $5 million from last year.

Superintendent Dr. Joseph Roy began the budget talk by cheerfully announcing, “So here we go!” and an hour later he was unable to keep the resentment from his voice as he and board members openly derided elected state officials for playing politics and passing blame for local problems onto school districts.

This directly reflects their irritation with the growing charter school problem – one which is lost on politicians and rarely even recognized by the public.

Roy, President Mike Faccinetto and member Shannon Patrick took turns voicing annoyance at charter schools and the massive investment they represent without compensation (state subsidies for charters ended in 2011) or being answerable to the district to fulfill educational responsibilities.

The cost of local charters to the district will be $26 million next year, Faccinetto said, for an estimated 2,000 students. He said charter school supporters line the pockets of Harrisburg politicians to keep the issue from even coming up for debate, and residents by and large don’t realize the scale of local impact.

Roy said Rep. Marcia Hahn in particular has washed her hands of property tax questions by telling constituents the responsibility lies with school districts. “It’s patently untrue that the legislature doesn’t impact property taxes,” he said.

Patrick said if she has such overpriced, ineffective employees as a small business owner, she’d fire them. “What do we have to do to get these people fired? These people are doing a sucky job.”

Roy said educating the taxpayers about the issue is necessary to get something done. Answered Patrick, excited to shine a spotlight on the issue, “Let’s get brazen!”

The school board plans to vote on whether to accept the preliminary budget by the end of January in order to qualify for Act 1 tax increase exceptions, and a final budget must be adopted by June 30.