Bensalem schools are cutting more than 30 positions amid a $12 million budget gap

The Bensalem Township school board voted Wednesday to cut more than 30 positions — from teachers, counselors, and librarians to assistant principals — to help fill a $12 million budget gap.

The board unanimously approved resolutions eliminating the positions for the 2026-27 school year, saying there was no avoiding painful decisions amid a dire financial picture.

Even with the cuts, board members said, they still have to find $2.7 million more in savings to balance the budget.

“None of us want to be taking this vote tonight,” said Stephanie Gonzalez Ferrandez, the board’s vice president. “This is a mess we have been left to clean up.”

The district is facing rising costs from charter school tuition and special education, Ferrandez said. Meanwhile, she said, past school boards dipped into the district’s savings and used federal pandemic relief money to balance budgets, rather than for one-time measures.

Bensalem is among the districts that have been receiving additional state aid — an extra $1.8 million last year — following a Commonwealth Court ruling that found Pennsylvania has been unconstitutionally depriving children in low-wealth districts of an adequate education.

But it is expected to take Pennsylvania seven more years to fully compensate underfunded districts, based on the state’s formula. Like Bensalem, some of those districts are still struggling: Philadelphia schools are facing a $300 million deficit, and some others are using state money to simply maintain, rather than make new investments.

While faulting past leadership for Bensalem’s current budget troubles, Ferrandez noted that “at this point, we have no indication of wrongdoing with regard to our finances.”

The district’s former superintendent, Samuel Lee, resigned last month, one year into a four-year contract. District officials have not commented on the reason for Lee’s departure.

Victoria Velasquez, the district’s assistant to the superintendent for K-12 administration, was named interim superintendent.

On Wednesday, the Bensalem board approved supplemental daily $100 stipends for the district’s acting director of human resources and acting assistant to the superintendent of teaching and learning — two people who board members said had shouldered significantly increased responsibilities amid administrative turnover.

Given the simultaneous vote to cut jobs, the timing of the stipend vote “is terrible,” board member Leann Hart acknowledged. But “the situation we are facing as a district is unprecedented,” she said, citing the financial troubles and multiple administrative departures.

The job cuts approved Wednesday are expected to result in “modest increases in class sizes,” consolidation of low-enrollment courses, and “adjustments to elective offerings,” according to a district plan.

Talia Borochaner, an English teacher at Bensalem High School, asked the board not to eliminate middle and high school librarians, who she said “provide something increasingly rare” as students struggle to identify credible sources.

Borochaner noted that the high school library is “often packed full” with students studying and reading. Losing the librarian will “cut the library off at the knees,” she said.

Board members said they had no other choices, and were not sure how they would close the rest of the budget gap.

“We don’t have any way around this, and trust me, we’ve looked,” board member Karen Winters said. “We are so deep in a deficit that there is not another way to do this.”