Many K-12 public school districts across the state received healthy increases in state aid for the 2023-24 fiscal year.
Gov. Jim Pillen and our own State Sen. Tom Briese were urging Nebraska school administrators to keep their property tax requests down to make sure taxpayers receive the benefit of the $300 million added to total state aid for the coming year.
I’m happy to see that most all school districts in our area are keeping their tax request increases at three percent or less.
But districts could exercise the option this year to exceed the three percent revenue cap. If 70 percent or more of the school board voted to do so, districts could increase their property tax revenue by up to seven percent.
Some area school boards, including Boone Central, approved the option to increase revenues beyond the three percent, even though they didn’t exercise that option.
This was intended for special cases only where more funding was needed to get through the year.
Gov. Pillen and Sen. Briese were worried that some districts might exceed the cap and hold the funds for various future purposes.
Because of inflation over the past several years, it isn’t an easy time to deal with a three percent lid on property tax revenues.
School districts are contending with higher wages and insurance costs, fuel costs and materials costs that seem to climb dramatically every year.
Still, we are at a crossroads for school finance. The state has finally committed to shouldering a larger portion of education costs, so we need to do our part on the local level.
Not Just Chicken Feed
In case our readers are wondering how much state aid is increasing for our area school districts in 2023-24 (as compared to the previous year), here are some figures from the Nebraska Department of Education website:
• Boone Central Schools will receive $1,356,774 in state aid this year. That’s more than triple last year’s total state aid total of $427,193 — an increase of $929,681.
• Riverside Public Schools will receive $417,192 in state aid this year, an increase of $290,454 from last year’s total state aid of $126,738. That’s 229 percent more state aid.
• St. Edward Public School will receive $267,383 in state aid this year, an increase of $245,685 from last year’s total of $21,698. The increase is more than 10 times last year’s total.
• Newman Grove Public School will receive $329,546 in state aid this year, which is an increase of $300,725 from last year’s total of $28,821. Again, that increase is more than 10 times last year’s total state aid.
• Elgin Public School will receive $578,026 in state aid this year. This is an increase of $178,699 or 44.7 percent from last year’s total state aid of $399,327.
Sustainability
Just one more thought about the state increasing state aid: We seemed to have a windfall in state tax revenues this past year. Reports showed the receipts were well over $6 billion.
So, we have more state revenues this year to spend on state school aid, but what might happen in years when state revenues fall short?
