The Salisbury Township School District Board of Directors held an operations and finance committee meeting June 11. The board discussed a new residency verification software, changes in rates for substitutes, year end projections and the proposed final budget.

Superintendent Lynn Fuini-Hetten started the meeting with a brief overview of the CLEAR Residency Verification Software which is a software application that gathers data and makes a case to support disenrolling a student and/or students who do not reside in the district but are currently enrolled in the district. This includes nonresident students who may be attending cyber/charter schools and may have moved out of the district or the state but are still on cyber/charter rolls — all of which comes at a cost to taxpayers.

She said families who enroll students in the district and do not live in Salisbury are essentially stealing services. The district has identified and processed enrollment fraud cases in the past but the utilization of this software is more efficient, provides better data and will pay for itself after the first case is detected.

Chief Financial Officer, Dawn Nickischer gave an in-depth presentation comparing and contrasting how the district currently checks for residency verification and how CLEAR, with access to public and proprietary documents, are able to efficiently track residency through public tax records, vehicle registration information and credit reporting agencies. If documents do not match district information it notifies the district and will trigger an investigation.

As for privacy concerns, there will be no more than three district employees who will have access to information and much of the personal information such as Social Security numbers and credit scores from CLEAR are redacted. The software’s main function is to utilize information which is already public such as utility bills, lease agreements or cars that have been registered to different addresses in other states or counties and report inconsistencies to the district.

As mentioned, if one student is disenrolled due to nonresidency, the software pays for itself. Administrators are asking the board to use CLEAR verification software in lieu of the current Forecast5 software at cost of $11,000 each year for the next three years. Forecast5 costs $18,000 per year and much of the same information generated by Forecast5 can be generated using the CLEAR Verification software.

The board supported the administration’s request and the software will be included in the agenda at next week’s regular school board meeting.

During the finance portion of the meeting, Nickischer explained changes to daily, long-term and building substitute rates resulting in approximately 3% increases. Changes have also been made to support staff long-term substitutes by adding long-term substitutes rates in an effort to secure potential candidates.

Nickischer reviewed year-end projections citing a 96% tax collection rate, 1.5 million in interest revenue and lower than expected expenditures resulting in a healthy $3.2 million in projected fund balance which will be allocated toward capital projects namely, the $10 million HVAC project at the high school. Money the district can put aside now will result in less money borrowed in the future.

Director Thomas Spinner in an effort to be clear with the public stated, “We need to bank this money ... We are not hoarding it ... We are strategically planning to utilize this money to make sure that in the future we are not cranking taxes up unnecessarily.”

The last item on the agenda was the proposed final budget which has not been changed and will be voted on during the June 18 board meeting. If the budget is approved, a one page summary of the budget will be mailed to resident households. The summary will clearly summarize budget drivers, a breakdown of expenditures and projected revenues at the federal, state and local levels.

The Salisbury Township School Board will hold a regular school board meeting 7 p.m. June 18. The next operations and finance committee meeting will be 7 p.m. Aug. 6. All meetings are held in the administration building, 1140 Salisbury Road, Allentown.