The Need
Without additional revenue, our district will face a deficit of nearly $2 million
In recent years, our district has successfully balanced our budget. Now, the financial picture is changing.
Public school districts in Minnesota receive the majority of their funding from the state, but for the past two decades, funding has not kept pace with inflation. School districts like ours are left to resolve a growing gap between the cost of education and inadequate state funding. Even with the assistance of COVID relief dollars, the growing gap between funding and costs makes it increasingly difficult to balance our district’s annual budget without compromising student services and staffing levels.
To address this financial challenge, many districts utilize operating levies, a type of local property tax that raises a certain dollar amount per pupil for educational expenses. Operating levies help pay for staffing, supplies, program costs and other operating expenses. Across Minnesota, 70% of school districts rely on funding from local operating levies, at an average of $850 per pupil to help fund these important services for students.
General Education Formula Allowance
Courtesy: Ehlers Public Finance Advisors
This chart demonstrates the gap between the annual per-pupil funding amount provided to public schools (orange) as determined by the state’s funding formula and the amount that would be provided to schools if the funding formula were adjusted for inflation (blue). In 2023, this gap is projected to reach $1,263 per-pupil unit.
The district has nearly used up remaining COVID-relief money
Marshall Public Schools previously had a $675 per pupil operating levy in place. That levy was allowed to expire in June 2018 to ease the tax burden on residents and prioritize investments in our district’s facilities, which included the construction of Southview Elementary School. Since then, the district has worked hard to manage costs effectively and use federal COVID-relief dollars to maintain a balanced budget that protected student services.
Without additional revenue, the district will need to make budget adjustments that could impact staffing, class sizes and student services.
Our students rely on support staff and popular programs like career and technical education to prepare them for success after graduation. A reduction in these services could result in larger class sizes, less individualized support for student learning and delayed investment in technology and other classroom resources.
