School Taxes Will Fall

Put in box: Check out www.starfl.com to see documents showing how much school taxes will fall this year.

The millage rate is rising but the tax bill for county public schools will be dropping for most taxpayers for the coming fiscal year.

The Gulf County School Board last Thursday approved for advertisement a tentative budget. That budget includes $1.8 million less in state and local dollars, representing a drop in funding of nearly 14 percent.

“We are going to be asking taxpayers for $1.8 million less dollars this year,” said district financial officer Sissy Worley.

The millage rate for county public schools will increase from 6.648 to 7.239, an increase of over half a mill.

A mill represents $1 for every $1,000 in taxable property value.

However, due to a nearly 21 percent decrease in what a mill will bring the school district – from $1.97 million to $1.56 million – the vast majority of taxpayers will realize a drop in school taxes for the coming year.

“Most people will pay less based on this,” said Superintendent of Schools Tim Wilder.

Unlike county and municipal budgets, the school district budget is set almost entirely by the state.

The main component, Required Local Effort, will rise in millage number, from 4.600 to 5.072, but will drop in actual dollars by nearly 13 percent.

The district must collect the Required Local Effort to receive any state funding.

Discretionary funding, that which is used primarily for basic school operations, remained the same at a state-set .748 mills but the dollar amount will drop by almost 21 percent.

The lone component over which the School Board has actual sway, Local Capital Outlay, was raised from .300 mills to .350 mills, still more than $45,000 under what the board levied last year for bricks and mortar.

“Because of the taxable values dropping we felt we needed to bump that up slightly to cover what we need to do,” Worley said.

Noteworthy is that the School Board did not levy a quarter-mill operating levy made available to all districts by state lawmakers and the district remains well below the potential maximum for capital outlay dollars, 1.50 mills.

Further, after three years of a funding split of 90/10 with the state due to the designation by the Department of Education of Gulf County as a “property rich” county, local taxpayers will foot 82 percent of the public school bill while the state picks up 18 percent – 12 percent in funding to the district and 6 percent in stabilization funds which are spread to other districts deemed not as “property rich.”

The state tacked on one additional funding component this year, called the Prior Period Funding Assessment. This is money to make up the difference between what the certified tax roll indicated the district should collect and actual collections.

In the past state money funded the difference, but due to budgetary shortfalls on the state level that burden has now fallen to local taxpayers.

That PPFE added .069 mills to the bill for local taxpayers – representing over $107,000.

The overall public school budget from state and local sources will drop from $13.1 million to $11.3 million, despite a 8.9 percent increase in the millage rate.

“This is about as low as it could go,” Wilder said. “We are as low as anybody in the state (in capital outlay millage).”

Enrollment

One of the drivers in school funding is enrollment trends and Gulf County continues to see a trend in declining enrollment.

As of this time, with students to report back Aug. 9, the district is roughly 30 students short in projections on which the school funding formula for this year was based.

The district and state projected 1,902 students – just four years ago the projection was just over 2,100 – and the current projection is for 1,870.

“When people are talking about declining enrollment we are living in it,” Wilder said.

The district typically sees a falloff in the “rollover rate” which is the number of students enrolled the prior year that have registered for the approaching year. And 30 students is not a high number compared to some recent years and the district is likely to realize a gain once school begins.

However, the continuing trend of fewer students is a troubling one for a small district because each full-time equivalent student brings $4,000-$5,000 to the district.

One impact on enrollment is a recent and dramatic increase in home-schooled students. This year some 55 children of school age in the county will be home-schooled, a significant percentage on the north end of the county, according to district staff.