Week 3, Part 4

Our district is quite small with a refined ADA of 501.284.  We are also a property poor district with a local property value of $65,851,537 (down almost $7 million from 2010).  The vast majority of our funding comes from the Foundation School Fund. Our M&O tax rate is $1.04.

 Our current funding with all adjustments from the FSP is $3,266,611. We receive funding for special education ($406,685), career and technology ($345,000), gifted and talented ($18,961), compensatory education ($414,942), and bilingual education ($663).  We do get $22,398 for our transportation allotment and another $45,379 for the high school allotment.  Our local fund assignment is $725,571.

With a yield per penny of $5,987, our district cannot generate a substantial amount of money and must rely on state funding to drive the M&O budget.  Since the M&O funds are designated for specific items which do not include buildings and facility improvement, we have passed two bonds in the last 7 years in order to replace buildings that were built in the 1930’s.  Even though the new buildings have changed the outside of our district, the lack of funding has limited our ability to meet our students’ educational needs as we have fewer aides for special education, have had to cut our fine arts programs, and now have larger class sizes in most grade levels due to teacher cuts. 

With the state wide budget crisis we are currently experiencing, small ,property poor districts will continue to struggle to provide all of the “bells and whistles” that more wealthy districts have until the state finds a way to have a truly equitable system of school finance.