Saturday, September 21, 2013

State Lawmakers Coming To Saline County Re: Education Funding


Should you be forced to fund your own school district -- while also being required to subsidize schools with large populations of non-English speaking students?  Should you be forced to fund your own school -- while you're also forced to subsidize Lincoln and Omaha schools?

Like it or not, that is how it is working in Nebraska. 


In our state, most property tax dollars go to your local K-12 school district.  To help those districts that are outspending their property tax revenues, the state government has traditionally kicked in around $1 billion of state aid every year. It's all based on a complex, ever-changing formula that even governors can't explain.

But did you know that currently 114 out of 249 districts receive no equalization aid? Not a dime. 
And Dorchester Public Schools is one of those districts that receive no state aid. (Recall our previous report that showed Dorchester has the lowest levies in the county, which, combined with no state aid, makes for another reason to praise current DPS administrators and school board officials.)

However, next door, Crete Public Schools is a huge recipient of equalization dollars, primarily due to their Spanish speaking population.  Schools in Omaha and Lincoln and most of Nebraska's larger cities are also large state aid recipients.  

In short, the state is telling small, rural school districts to provide for themselves, while subsidizing urban school districts with general tax dollars from income and sales taxes.

Seems like a raw deal to us.  Most Nebraskans we talk with don't think it's fair, either.


State lawmakers want to hear what you think about public school funding.  The Nebraska Legislature's Education Committee is studying possible changes to funding of K-12 schools.  

One of the Education Committee's upcoming stops will be in Crete.  The meeting is set for 4 p.m., Monday, Oct. 7 at the Crete High School Auditorium, 1500 E. 15th Street in Crete.  

We think it's worth our time time to show up and tell lawmakers to stop forcing rural school districts, like Dorchester's, to pay for larger school districts that have much more residential wealth and assets.  

If they don't hear from us, we have no room to complain.

2 comments:

  1. Bravo. Ditto. Amen.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear Dorchester Times: This may be a good time/place to post the information I put together and provided for the blog, after your August post of the Crete Bond issue. I tried to address these issues in an effort to help the people of our district understand the levy formula, budgets, tax requests and valuations. I feel that some individuals may like to address their lawmakers as your story states, but if they don't totally understand the process, it makes it difficult. Thank you. Deb Spanyers

    ReplyDelete

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