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The Tunkhannock Area School Board on Thursday decided not to move forward with a solar energy project the district has debated the past two years.
The board also approved the district’s 2026-27 final budget, which does not include a property tax increase.
The board did not advance a motion on a proposed power service agreement with SRE/Greenworks for a lease-to-own solar project at five school district sites.
That effectively ends the district’s plans to place solar panels at three district-owned sites — two at the district’s main campus near the border of Tunkhannock and Tunkhannock Twp. and one at the district’s campus in Mehoopany Twp.
Board members cited significant increases in cost projections, especially from electrical utility company Penelec, as a main reason it is no longer practical to pursue the project. There is also uncertainty over whether the district would receive federal solar tax credits, as well as reduced projections for the overall long-term savings the district could realize by switching to solar power.
“It just wasn’t enough savings to justify the cost,” board President Holly Arnold said, after the meeting. “We are done with it.”
If there is a shift in the financial outlook and political climate at some point in the future, the board could reconsider whether a solar project is feasible, but for now the project is “dead in the water,” Arnold said.
The district will withdraw land development plans for the solar project that were going through the county-level approval process, she said.
The board unanimously adopted the $57.3 million balanced budget for 2026-27 proposed by Superintendent Paul Dougherty. It does not include a property tax increase. The millage rate for Tunkhannock Area property owners will remain unchanged at 86.984 mills for the fiscal year that begins July 1.
However, Dougherty cautioned that it required a contribution of $2.95 million from the district’s reserve fund to balance the budget and avoid a tax hike.
That was more than $2 million less than the $5 million Dougherty had projected taking from the reserve fund when he proposed a preliminary budget in April. The administration worked every day to find ways to reduce the use of reserve funds, he said.
However, Dougherty cautioned that the district cannot continue to use reserve funds to plug budget holes every year, or else those funds will dwindle.
The district has “a healthy fund balance but that needs to be protected,” he said.
Also, the district has saved significant money in recent years through the reduction of staff by attrition due to declining student enrollment, Dougherty said. The district is approaching the limit of attrition-based staff reductions, he said.
“We don’t have a lot of room to find savings,” Dougherty said.
The state educational funding formula is unfair to small, rural school districts and state officials have made it clear they expect revenue for those districts to be raised at the local level, he said.
The budget is posted to the county website as part of the agenda for Thursday’s school board meeting: go.boarddocs.com/pa/tunk/Board.nsf/Public
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