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Mostly Cloudy Taxes going up for Oceanside School District
District announces 2.29 % increase in tax levy
At a Board of Education meeting on March 15, Oceanside Superintendent Dr. Herb Brown concluded the district's round of four budget meetings, revealing a 2.29 percent increase in the district’s tax levy for the 2010-11 school year.
At the same meeting, Brown discussed the district’s staffing for the upcoming year, and Assistant Superintendent of Business Louis Frontario outlined the district’s revenue.
“The increase [in the budget] next year is 1.98 percent,” Brown told the large audience of mostly students from Oceanside High School who had to attend the meeting for class. “We know these are difficult economic times, and we tried to keep increases as low as possible.”
Citing just such increases, Brown started the meeting by detailing the changes that were made to the budget between the last two meetings—changes asked for by the Board of Education, including updating many salary lines to reflect the changes that non-represented employees (like the assistant superintendents) were receiving. In addition, the district will be adding another social worker to the elementary schools next year at the behest of the Board, so that every school will have its own social worker.
While many salary lines increased, an unexpectedly high number of teacher retirements this year helped to keep the overall effect on the budget low—the total budget only increased by $74. The tax levy is increasing by $2,341,734 to $104,580,827. Taxes will be paying for 81.3 percent of the district’s $128,584,216 budget.
There are two important numbers in regards to school budgets and taxes: the tax levy and the tax rate. The tax levy is determined by the school district and is the amount of money the district needs to raise through taxes. The tax rate is decided by the county and is the amount of money property owners have to pay based on the assessment of their property. While raising the tax levy will in turn raise the tax rate, the district does not have the authority to levy taxes—it is the county that technically raises the taxes people pay each year for schools. The county will release the tax rates at the end of the month.
