From the SD School Administrators, Wade Pogany from ASBSD and Tony Venhuizen are on camera to allow him to do some further explanation of the funding plan.
6 thoughts on “Governor’s Chief of Staff goes into detail on Ed funding plan”
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Listening to them talk about other revenues and local effort keeps raising a question in my mind that I think has been overlooked in the funding formula.
The State of South Dakota made a good move going to open enrollment in my mind. This allows the general public to pick the winners or losers by where they elect to send their children to school.
Now for the overlooked part IMHO, why does a student that open enrolls in a district not have tuition follow them from their home district?
Lets say you have School District A and School District B. For whatever reason District A is gaining District B’s students through open enrollment. All the local effort is being produced by citizens of District A for open enrolled students of District B enrolled in School District A.
Meanwhile, District B citizens are rewarded with lower taxes because they don’t have as many students to support.that was caused by a free will exodus to District A by parents of District B students.
Just a question that keeps rolling around in my mind and no one has given me a satisfactory answer.
I pay property tax into four different school districts and I know the above senario is happening because I can watch it with my own eyes and see it in my tax notices.
In real life District A’s property taxes are 50% higher than District B’s taxes and then District B gets the added bonus of receiving sparsity aid from the state to boot because they can’t keep enough students enrolled.
It’s time to quit rewarding failing districts within the state.
Our formula makes sure schools don’t suffer financially because local effort is less. In your scenario, if district a has a lot more taxable property than district b, the state aid portion makes sure b isn’t suffering. Taxes can be lower in a but not 50% even comparing the richest to the poorest. Capital outlay levys are the biggest difference in most situations. Make sure you’re comparing levys not amounts.
Sparsity factor has nothing to do with failing. We need schools in rural sd and you have to be quite a distance from the next school to qualify. We don’t want kids riding buses over an hour a day to and from school. Open enrollment pertains more to close together schools or students who live on the edge of a school district but the neighboring school is closer.
First off, your wrong in your assumptions,in my case District B has almost twice the valuation of District A.
I just looked at the tax notice and District A is taxing $11.54/1000 for the school portion and District B is taxing $ 4.11/1000 of valuation.
You all keep thinking of the state aid portion of the equation, but my point is District B is losing population and students, but they are able to hold a vast amount of property valuation hostage for a dying school.
Therefore the state has to make a larger payment to District A because District B’s kids are going there. If District A was able to get some of District B’s local effort in the form of a tuition, the state would have more money in the kitty for all schools across the state.
I understand sparsity and the reasoning, But District A & B co-op in sports and can drive back and forth every day for practices and games, but can’t drive the 18 miles to make a more efficient school system.
Until the state steps in, property owners are going to continue to be the whipping horse for education funding in South Dakota, you just get whipped harder depending which side of an imaginary line your property sits on.
Doesn’t it work like this? State aid follows the student to whatever school he is open enrolled in, but the local effort part of the per student funding stays with the local district. That is what I was always told.
State aid follows the student to the district.
I called Pierre and asked about this, and it’s much more complicated than I thought. The local taxes do stay with the first school district, but the state aid varies according to how much per student aid the receiving district gets from the state. At first glance, the new proposal by Gov. Daugaard would seem to discourage open enrollment; am I wrong here?