Many Idaho school districts ask for help
More and more of Idaho’s 114 school districts are asking taxpayers to dig deeper into their wallets by supporting supplemental levies to pay for teachers, principals, fuel and operations.
Several districts, including Coeur d’Alene, have scheduled levy votes today. Also voting today on levies are Meridian, the state’s largest school district with 28,321 students, Twin Falls and tiny Deary in North Idaho. They require a simple majority to pass.
Voters in the Coeur d’Alene School District are being asked to approve a two-year $14.6 million levy, a 44 percent increase over the current levy.
Since 1995, the number of Idaho districts with these property tax levies has risen to 54 from 46. In the same period, their value jumped 51 percent to $68 million, the state Department of Education said.
Some have criticized this expansion, saying schools should do more to trim costs and run themselves more efficiently in the face of limited dollars.
Educators say they rely on supplemental levies to pay for state and federal mandates including “No Child Left Behind,” a student population that’s grown by 11,000 kids to 256,000 since 2000, and rising costs.
“State appropriations aren’t keeping up with student growth rates and inflation,” said Kathy Phelan, president of the Idaho Education Association, the teachers union. “… School districts are just struggling to keep their day-to-day operations going.”
The portion of the state budget dedicated to public schools has dwindled over the past decade, according to Education Department documents. In the current fiscal year, 46.3 percent or about $960 million of Idaho’s $2.1 billion budget went to schools, compared with 49.2 percent in 1996.
In Coeur d’Alene, more than half of the $14.6 million levy on the ballot today is considered a baseline levy, which goes into the district’s general fund and supports all district programs. The baseline levy constitutes about 8 percent of the district’s general fund.
The Coeur d’Alene levy proposal also includes money for remediation programs, textbooks, curriculum and advanced learning.
In Meridian, which hasn’t had a supplemental levy since the mid-1980s, officials say they’re being forced to ask voters for $10 million over the next two years because per-classroom funding has risen just 1 percent since 2000, trailing inflation.
“The discretionary funding we get has increased by just $12 per student over five years,” said Meridian spokesman Eric Exline, who says the district has added 2,000 students this year alone. “Our costs have exceeded that amount.”
Still, some critics point out that state education funding, as a dollar amount, is on the rise. Idaho schools received a $987 million state appropriation for the coming fiscal year, up 3 percent.
“There has been an increase in school funding every year that I’ve been there,” said Rep. Gary Collins, a three-term Nampa Republican. “Possibly it’s not enough to keep up with how schools’ budgets are growing, but I don’t know that that’s necessarily the state’s fault.”
Even as voters go to the polls to vote on supplemental levies, a budding grass-roots effort is under way to cap Idaho property tax revenue at just 1 percent of market value.
Orofino-based Idaho Property Tax Reform, with supporters across the state, wants to gather 47,881 signatures needed to put the 1 percent measure on the 2006 ballot.
“Property tax rates have been escalating at a higher rate than any other tax rate,” said Chuck Cline, the group’s chairman. “It seems to be the only place they’re going for money is residential property taxes.”
This kind of talk has some state school officials concerned that voters already angered about their rising property taxes could eventually turn against supplemental levies.
“At some point, I think the property taxpayers are going to say, ‘Enough is enough, we’re tired of our property taxes going up,’ ” said Tim Hill, finance chief for the state Department of Education.