Park Hill School District faces potential tax increase, budget cuts

With temperatures the hottest they’ve been all summer, high school fall sports practices began this week. Athletes will be back in action and students soon back in the classroom as another school year is just around the corner. For the Park Hill School District the excitement of a new school year also comes with the potential of an approximately $1.8 million budget shortfall caused mostly in part by the decrease in state education funding and lower property values resulting from the recent recession. Board of Education members will be forced this month to make decisions on what course of action will be taken to address the issue.

The district is facing a dilemma government bodies across the country are dealing with in choosing between two unpopular choices to balance the approximately $119 million budget. One option being budget cuts to make up for the shortfall. Many of those reductions could come in the form of salary freezes and decreased benefit programs for district employees. The second and likely option is to raise the district’s property tax levy. The increase in the district’s levy is based on property values and estimates say the increase would be equivalent to around $40 for a $200,000 home. This week district administrators will recommend to the board an 11.06 cent increase in the levy raising it from 2009-2010’s $4.6920 rate to $4.8026 for 2010-2011.

Usually raising the district’s tax levy would require voter approval, but the district received voter approval to raise the levy in 2002 and never increased it to the maximum cap ($4.997). So an increase only needs approval from the board until the amount reaches the previously approved fixed amount. In fact, the district has taken steps in recent years to lower the levy which was a luxury provided by, until recently, strong economic growth in Platte County with the Board of Education providing a 7.5 cent voluntary rollback for the 2009-2010 school year. Board members have until August 31 to set the tax rate as only an estimated levy increase was available when the initial 2010-2011 budget was approved.

Although an increase in the tax levy would solve the shortfall in the 2010-2011 school year, it will not likely address project shortfalls from 2011 to as far out as 2014. Over the next several years, it seems likely both avenues of making budget cuts and raising the levy will be required. It currently costs approximately $10,000 a year to educate a student at Park Hill. With a goal of not losing the quality of education they provide, board members and administrators will simultaneously need to consider ways to maintain that level of quality more efficiently and also look to new ways for the district to generate revenue. Increased activity fees and establishment of new corporate partnerships are just a few of the ideas being tossed around as potential options.

Budget crunches create the need to make tough decisions and there will be plenty in the coming years. Despite public education rarely being fully funded by the Missouri state legislature, local school districts have been able to thrive during good economic times. It goes to prove that even in the financially sound condition Platte County finds itself compared to other areas of the country; one of the top school districts in the state is not immune to the repercussions of the recession and decreased school funding.