Agenda - 04-23-20; Item 4 - School Funding Equity between School Districts in Orange County

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1 ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS ACTION AGENDA ITEM ABSTRACT Meeting Date: April 23, 2020 Action Agenda Item No. 4 SUBJECT: School Funding Equity between School Districts in Orange County DEPARTMENT: County Manager's Office ATTACHMENT(S): INFORMATION CONTACT: A. Statewide Table of County and District Tax Travis Myren, 919-245-2308 Information PURPOSE: To discuss school funding equity between the two School Districts in Orange County. BACKGROUND: This agenda item is in response to a petition by a Board member. In North Carolina, each county is responsible for supplementing state and federal appropriations to public education. State law requires the County to allocate current expense or operating funding to each school system based on an equal per pupil amount. In addition to current expense funding, counties provide funds to each system for recurring and long range capital projects. These capital expenses are not required to be allocated on a per pupil basis. The FY2019-20 budget provides $4,352.25 per student for each of the 20,408 students in the two school systems. The Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools District was allocated approximately $53.4 million in current expense funding based on an enrollment of 12,274 students. The Orange County Schools District was allocated approximately $35.4 million in current expense funding based on an enrollment of 8,134 students. State law also allows Local Education Agencies (LEA) to levy special district taxes. District taxes must be approved by referendum. Once the tax is approved, the Board of County Commissioners formally approves the special district tax rate each year. Attachment A shows the counties in the state that levy taxes for more than one school district and the special district tax rates, if any, authorized in each of those Districts. The most recent data available from the Department of Public Instruction is from 2017-18. The Special District Taxes are only levied within the District's boundary. In FY2019-20, Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools maintained a special district tax rate of 20.18 cents per $100 assessed value. For this fiscal year, the special district tax is estimated to generate an additional $1,977 per student or a total of $24,267,972. This additional per pupil funding increases per pupil resources in the Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools District to a total of$6,329.25. Based on the requirements of State law, the County cannot equalize the total per pupil amount since it must provide the same per pupil funding for current expenses to each district. At this time, the County does not have a way to equalize the total per pupil funding unless each district authorizes the same special district tax or the existing special district tax is eliminated.