Centennial Cuts Down $5M 2025-2026 Deficit

WARMINSTER TOWNSHIP, PA — Like a few other Bucks County school districts, the Centennial School District had dug itself into a financial hole.

School officials had forecast an anticipated $5 million deficit by the end of the 2025-2026 school year, suffering a financial fate that the Bensalem and Pennsbury school districts also dealt with.

But the school district has been able to curb costs.

At a recent meeting, Chief Financial Officer Tom Greenwood reported preliminary year-end figures stating that the deficit was reduced to about $500,000.

Greenwood told the Centennial School Board at the Oct. 16 meeting that the $4.5 million improvement came from a combination of stronger-than-expected revenue and lower spending.

School Director Tony Sadowski, though, gives a lot of credit to new director Karen Krieger, who used her financial expertise to take on the fiscal challenges.

"She has been a needed breath of fresh air leading our Finance Committee, and all this is the result of a full team effort — board cooperation with administrators rather than adversarial relationships, adult conversations rather than the circus theatrics of previous board members, and a mindset shift throughout all levels of the district," Sadowski said.

Sadowski said it took a "different — and frankly much stronger — board" to accelerate efforts to reduce costs "without sacrificing the quality of the academics, athletics, and arts that make CSD great."

Krieger stated in a Facebook post that the previous board and the district were "fiscally irresponsible and mismanaged spending with staff contracts that they could not afford."

She stated that Centennial teachers are the third highest after Solebury/New Hope and Central Bucks and that even Council Rock teachers make less.

Krieger said the current school board — with the support of the schools superintendent — put together a plan that included zero based budgeting, vendor consolidation, and offered early retirement incentives, while bringing back students who were placed outside of the district.

, transfer of entity from BCIU back into Centennial, 1306/4605 recoupment of dollars spent historically and currently that were owed to the district that was just never done, access reporting to ensure that IEPs are legally defensible in order to avoid financial settlements, grant submissions with potential for additional revenue and the migration to ACH payments in conjunction with vendor negotiations. Plus policy updates to ensure that all requests for funding from within the district and also those requests from MBIT and BCIU are fully understood in terms of one time and recurring operational costs before approval.

"So yes, we have a plan and will continue to march down the path of reducing the deficit and balancing the budget," she said. "We have a very proactive finance committee and a superintendent who needs the help and experience of a finance committee who are solely focused on giving our students the best education and a bright future while living within our means."