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Originally Posted by Randall55
I was pondering the same. Why did school taxes go up when 70-80% of the tax base do not have children? If you take into account the Developer built three new schools at no charge, it makes less sense. Maybe, they are upgrading/remodeling the older schools? Maybe, more children have moved into the area? Quite a bit of apartments, townhomes, and subdivisions have been built.
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I thought the same thing. But someone told me the school board actually has lease payments for charter schools in Florida. I contacted a school board member to verify. As required by Florida law school boards have to make lease payments for charter school facilities. So new facilities will have new costs even for charter schools.
Here is the response I received:
Good afternoon. I’ve been asked to respond to your inquiry about lease payments to the Villages Charter-In-The-Workplace, a unique public charter school housed in Sumter- and one of the best Charters in the nation.
School districts in Florida are funded through a combination of state revenues and local taxes. Using an equalization formula required by the state of Florida, about 90% of our operating budget comes from local property taxes.
As way of brief explanation, all districts in Florida receive roughly the same dollar amount per student. However, the source of those funds come from a combination of both state and local taxes. Statewide, as a county’s property values increase then a bigger proportionate share comes from local tax revenue, even though the overall amount stays relatively constant per student. Therefore, Florida’s equalization model for student funding is relatively identical across the state with some state determined cost of living adjustments- it is just the source of those funds can come from mostly the state or mostly local taxes. This formula is determined at the state level and is applied based on the state’s adopted funding formula in any particular year.
Florida Statute requires districts to share both operational funds and capital funds with Charter schools, each having their respective expenditure restrictions. Therefore, in addition to the per-student funds from the state, all school districts share capital funds with Charter Schools in some way. Unlike the above mentioned Required Local Effort, the school district does have some limited flexibility in determining revenue for capital expenditures.
Based on an agreement between the School Board and our Villages Charter School, those capital payments to the charter school are in the form of a lease agreement based on an agreed-to percentage reflecting overall student enrollment. The payments are used for capital needs, and in this case, they are used to pay the facility lease for the Charter.
The permissible uses of capital outlay funds by charter schools are:
• Purchase of real property
• Construction of school facilities
• Purchase, lease-purchase, or lease of permanent or relocatable school facilities
• Purchase of vehicles to transport students to and from the charter school
• Renovation, repair, and maintenance of school facilities that the charter school owns or is purchasing through a lease-purchase or long-term lease of 5 years or longer
• Purchase, lease-purchase, or lease of computer and devise hardware and operating system software necessary for gaining access to or enhancing the use of electronic and digital instructional content and resources; and enterprise resource software applications that are classified as capital assets in accordance with definitions of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, have a useful life of at least five years, and are used to support school-wide administration or state-mandated reporting requirements. Enterprise resource software may be acquired by annual license fees, maintenance fees, or lease agreement.
• Payment of the cost of premiums for property and casualty insurance for the school facilities
• Purchase, lease-purchase, or lease of driver's education vehicles, maintenance vehicles or equipment, security vehicles, or vehicles used in storing or distributing materials and equipment.
• Payment of the cost of opening day collection for the library media center of a new school
Frequently Asked Questions
In response to your specific inquiry about paying a lease, I would refer you to a U.S. Department of Education March 23, 2020 report on Charter School Facilities that states:
“Nationally, roughly 25% of charter schools are located in district or government facilities, 25% own their own buildings, and 50% rent space on the private market”
https://charterschoolcenter.ed.gov/s...ing-Trends.pdf
School funding in Florida is complicated and is based on function/object budgeting, including lease payments I hope this helps clarify. Thanks for your inquiry. Feel free to contact us anytime.