ORANGE BEACH, AL – Opponents of new taxes to help ease overcrowding in Baldwin County Schools believe officials should better spend the taxes they receive.
County officials say they are trying …
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ORANGE BEACH, AL – Opponents of new taxes to help ease overcrowding in Baldwin County Schools believe officials should better spend the taxes they receive.
County officials say they are trying to do just that.
In 2008 the Baldwin County Board of Education says it spent $9,361 per student and had 4,199 employees educating 26,733 students.
During the 2014-15 school year the county system had 31,087 students, spent about $8,787 per student and employed 3,681 in staff.
“Per pupil expenditure declined $574 per student in 2008-2009 school year compared to 2014-2015 school year,” Baldwin County Board of Education CFO John Wilson said. “The state average PPE has increased $200 per student in the 2008-2009 school year compared to the 2014-2015 school year.”
As far as state rankings, Baldwin County was 92nd out of 137 school systems statewide in student spending. Mountain Brook had the highest PPE at $12,162 and Autauga County was the lowest at $7,536.
Several factors, most rooted in local and state regulations, dictate how Baldwin County spends the money it receives.
“This means that 61 out of 71 revenue sources for the school system are earmarked regarding how those funds can be spent,” Wilson said. “For those 61 sources of funds the board has no discretion on how those funds are to be spent as they are earmarked based on federal, state, and local restrictions.”
The county collects the equivalent of 11 mills of property taxes for schools and collection of 10 of those mills goes into equity funding. It is a complicated process with the basic result being the county is paying the first 10 mills of state funding. The state determines how much a school system is eligible for based on student population. Then an equivalent of 10 mills of property tax from that district is deducted from the amount.
Say the system is deemed eligible for $50 million from the state based on student enrollment. If 10 mills of property tax in that district is equal to $10 million then they state sends only $40 million of the total.
The county has more leeway on spending the amount above the 10 mills, Wilson says.
“The one mill remaining represents the only amount out of the 11 mills which is not restricted from use as a result of the statewide equity funding provisions,” Wilson said.
Recent referendums not only rejected new taxes to fund new facilities, but failed to renew some other taxes in the same vote. A penny sales tax that benefits schools also expires soon.
“We lost a 1 mill ad valorem tax which equates to about $4 million per year,” Island school board representative Angie Swiger said. “We had more than 50 percent of the population that voted yes but that particular tax had to have a 60 percent majority vote.
“Now, we are concentrating on the penny tax, the one-cent sales tax that is set to expire in 2018. The legislative delegation or the county commission can vote to make it permanent or to extend it, but the commission has shown no interest in doing so, and the delegation has no interest in making it permanent.”
Swiger said without the penny tax Baldwin County would face a desperate situation.
“We are working with them on a possible extension before we have to ask the public to renew,” she said. “It generates approximately $36-$40 million per year and is critical to the survival of the school system as we know it.”
In the past five years Baldwin County has averaged adding 544 students per year but has not opened a new building since Fairhope Elementary was built in 2009.
“The school board has built wings and extensions to existing buildings since 2009,” Wilson said.
