- Since the 1930's, states have used the local property tax to fund schools. Depending on where you live, school taxes may make up as little of 10 percent or as much as half of your total property tax bill. Other parts of property taxes go to support local services such as emergency services, utilities and water and sewer service. Cities, towns and counties use property taxes to repair roads and maintain parks and libraries. All of these services may be part of a property tax bill. The section of your property tax that supports schools may also be broken down into segments for city elementary and high schools and any community college that serves your area. All of these taxing districts and special units will be listed on your tax bill, followed by the "mill rate" and the dollar amount you owe to each taxing district. Your total tax bill should be the sum of all these amounts pus any special or one-time assessments listed. Property tax may pay most or part of the funding in your school district depending on your state's school aid formula.
Schools, like other taxing districts, must prepare a budget to determine how much money they will need to operate (levy) each year. This process is begun almost as soon as the school year starts, with classroom teachers, department heads and administration preparing a list of everything that will be needed for the next school year, from schoolbooks to floor sweeping compound, transportation to pencil sharpeners. Replacement materials have to be estimated and cost must be approximated using an inflation index guessed at by the administration. The budget must include totals for salaries, repairs, gas and electricity, as well as communications and technology. Educators, maintenance staff and administrators must make their best guesses, not knowing only about how many students they will have and what assignment they'll probably have. They cannot know how much prices will increase or what new unfunded mandates the state or federal government will impose. In other words, it's a mammoth undertaking.- Once all the budgets are done, the district administrator and the board of education must review them and trim or amend them based on their best guesses about the coming year. Once they've finished, they will hold public hearings to allow citizens to give their input. At the final hearing, the budget will be adopted and the administration will figure the levy---the total needed to operate the schools for the next year. The levy is converted to a mill rate by a complicated formula, but basically the school must figure a multiplier based on one thousandth of the total assessed valuation of property in the district that will get them the total amount needed for the budget. If a house is appraised at $150,000 and the school's rate was .0219, its owner could multiply one thousandth of the home's value by 2.18 to get $328.50 as the school tax portion of his total property tax bill.
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