Farrell Area School District has hired a Greenville firm to help it determine whether enough Wheatland residents signed a petition to secede from the district.

Keystone Research Inc. was hired Monday at a rate of $65 an hour, and will be able to be reimbursed for "reasonable expenses" for court proceedings.

One of the company's key tasks will be to determine how many taxable inhabitants are in Wheatland.

The designation is important because the school code says that a majority of taxable inhabitants of any contiguous territory may present a petition to county court asking to leave a school district.

Wheatland's Educational Alternative's Taskforce wants the borough to become part of West Middlesex Area School District.

The law does not define "taxable inhabitant" and it has not been defined in other cases. District solicitor James Nevant II said he believes that anyone who could be taxed, including minors and entities, fits the definition. Joann Jofery, attorney for WhEAT, has said that she is using the standard of anyone who is eligible to vote.

Nevant said, by his count, 244 people signed WhEAT's petitions.

While Keystone has not looked into school secession before, "They are engaged in research of all sorts, but particularly in public tax and finance issues," Nevant said. The firm will be able to testify on financial factors and the impact of secession, he said.

School officials said they had no idea what Keystone's initial research will cost but expected it would cost less than doing the work in-house.