001Welcome USD264 uh community, parents, patrons, staff, students, and anybody that's watching online on uh USD264's uh YouTube page. Uh here for our superintendent update, our Clearwater clarity for January 2026. So uh I am recording this as we've come back from break on January 5th, 2026. And it's kind of hard to imagine we're already halfway through the school year, but also exciting at the same time. and we were reflecting back looking at notes from this time last year where we were in the midst of a massive snowstorm where the first week back we only had one day of school during that first week back. So, uh this week we're enjoying 70°ree weather uh with snow at the end of the week. So, welcome to Kansas in that part. Uh this month's update we're really going to
002talk about property taxes and part of uh the time to be able to talk about property taxes because it's in the news a lot right now. um not only on the state legislature but on a national level and at the same time with the potential of the uh solar farm that may be going in uh in our district as well as surrounding districts. So part of this is for our strategic plan uh goal number four making sure that we're providing consistent and relevant communication. Uh property taxes is a really confusing thing. Uh it is not something that just comes easy when we think about school finance and some of the rationale and reasons for it. And so part of it is I'm going to give a real quick big broad overview. Uh but we'll be
003scheduling probably three different sessions towards the end of January and beginning of February. Uh some in the morning, one maybe over a lunch hour, and one in the evening to be able to just um better describe what our school funding is and why property taxes matter and how is our current enrollment and the status of our um student body right now going to have an impact on that. So, we're really looking at the past, the present, and the future. So, be looking at uh Facebook as well as any bright arrow message that will come out to give you some update about when some of those sessions are going to be. So, first off, our property taxes for USD264 is based on a mill levy system. So, in a real quick generic look at it, a
004mill is something that is allocated from a school district or a governing body to pull property taxes from your property that you live on based on the value. We take in consideration of the overall value of our school district. So, our school district's property value is right around $90 million. So for everyone that lives within uh USD264, all businesses, all organizations, all land inside of USD264's boundaries is assessed yearly by the Sedwood County appraiser. That is then totaled and that is given us our property value. 1 mil equals approximately 1% of that. So one mill is going to equal $90,000. Um some some of you may not have a frame of reference for where are we at comparison to surrounding districts or even uh districts within the state. So as of this morning when I
005looked on the state's website based on the 2425 data which is last year's we were the 94th most highest appraised district. So there's 93 districts above us and about 100 or about 200 districts uh 180 districts behind us in terms of property valuation. So, we're kind of right in the middle. Uh, Shauny Mission School District in Johnson County's property value is $5 billion. That's with a B, billion. And that's the most the highest valued district. So, for every one mill that they raise on property taxes, they get $5 million worth of revenue. Comparison to us, for every one mill, we get $90,000. The lowest is in Western Kansas. It's Wesken. It's one of the smallest districts uh also by student population, but their property value is only $11 million. So in comparison, for every 1
006mill that they get, they only get $11,000 um for that. So part of the lawsuit that was brought forward in 1992 to start the school finance lawsuits uh was equalization because Shauny Mission School District would be able to gain a lot more revenue based on their property value than Weskin, Kansas, and a lot more than Clearwater, Kansas. And so the first thing we have to do is it's a state laws and we have to assess 20 mills and we can't change that. We have to do that by state law. So the first 20 mills of our 58 that are assessed go to the state of Kansas. So we um allocate that or we um tax our local district. That money then is collected through Sedwick County through your property taxes and then that is sent
007to Topeka to the legislature where they put that in what's called the state general fund and then they allocate money back to school districts based on enrollment. So that provides an opportunity for every district to get the equal amount of aid per student. Now there are other waitings and we would get into that in a deeper meeting but the first 20 mills have to go to the state and then it's distributed equally based on a student model. So, I can't lower that mill levy. I can't raise that mill levy. That is set in statute by law to be 20 mills. The second way that we assess uh property taxes is through what's called a local option budget. Again, that was started in 1992 when it was given an opportunity for school districts to add an
008extra um assessment of property taxes to the general fund to help supplement um things like salaries, classroom instruction materials, um supplies, and textbooks. And that is a percent of the general fund. So the local school board has decided that we go up to 33%. So we can take 33% of our um general fund which this last year was let's just round it to 10 million. We are getting about 3.3 million in our lob budget. And so that created 33% or about 16 mills. And that number generates or fluctuates based on our general fund request of our state budget. So if we have as our students are getting less our general fund proportionally would be getting a little bit smaller and so our request for lob would be getting smaller at the same time. The next
009is capital outlay. So by law a school board can levy up to 8 mills. Um and that money that is levied through that 8 mills can only be used for projects um that would be capital in nature such as a roof, such as parking lots, such as desks, um such as building and construction projects. And so the school board here has um gone up to 8 mills every year that we've been here so far and has been at 8 mills uh for quite a while and that is an attempt to make sure that we're working on deferred maintenance. And then the last one is bond and interest. So you guys over the past 20 years have passed two different bonds. One in 2005 for the current high school that was just paid off last year
010and then the most recent one in 2017 which was renovations to CIMS and CEW uh which will are projected to be paid off in 2032 and 2033. That mill levy varies from year to year based on the amount needed to pay off the principal and interest um that is owed. So right now we're having to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of about 1.3 1.2 to $1.3 million per year of principal and interest to pay off that bond issue. And so we work each year and as the valuation of the property fluctuates, so does the amount that we uh request to make sure that we're only asking for the amount that we need to pay off our principal and interest and not anymore. So how do we do that? We start in the spring. uh how
011do we start deciding what our mill levies are that we're going to need? So, starting in the spring, specifically in February, we start meeting and looking at what our staffing needs are. How many students do we have? How many teachers do we have? How many teachers do we need to have? And we start looking at some of those staffing needs. Then we start looking at the expenses and the year-over-year increase. Just like you feel it at home, uh when your electricity rates go up or you have to pay more for electricity or your grocery bill is getting a little higher or gas is um gasoline and diesel is a higher price, we feel that as a school, too. We buy our our um supplies just like you do, and we buy them in a in
012a large scale. Our average electric bill for the district is right around $20,000, $24,000 sometimes in peak months. We've done a lot of things to be efficient and pull some of that cost down and we're saving quite a bit of money. Uh but that cost is going up year after year just like food cost and gasoline costs are. And so from there as we look at our expenses and we look at our staffing needs, we determine how much money we're going to need uh to be able to meet those needs of increasing our student achievement as well as our um strategic plan. And then lastly, our enrollment determines our final budget number. we kind of have a guess of what we're going to do and when we start in July of the budget process, we
013are guessing estimating how many students are going to be enrolled on September 20th and then after September 20th, we go through a form of audits with KSDE and they start to let us know how much is our budget really going to be. We won't know until probably March or April what our final budget numbers are going to be because they have to complete the budget and the audit amounts for all school districts and then they let us know what our actual final numbers are going to be. So throughout the entire time of when we start in July until we get to um you know about midappril when we get our final numbers we are kind of guessing how much our budget's going to be based on what our enrollment numbers are but we don't know
014that final number until late in the spring. So, that's why it's always good to have cash on hand. When you hear people talk about cash reserves, a lot of it has to do with you need to have cash on hand because you're not quite sure what your budget's going to be. Plus, you also need some money to spend in uh July, August, and September before you start getting your first um payments from the state. So, here's just something that we're going to look at on the timing of property taxes. So, property valuation drives your tax bill. And I can say with 100% honesty and I can show you my tax bill if you like. Property value on my house from year to year over the past two years has not changed. My property valuation has
015stayed the same and my taxes actually went down. And so property valuation drives what your tax bill is. The schools we have lowered our mill levy over the last four years and I'll show you that on a chart on the next slide. property valuation and what the Sedwick County appraiser or if you live in or have property in Sar County, what the Sumar County appraisers determine the value of your property is that is then taken into a formula as you can see here uh within this table of what it is that calculates your budget or what is due. We have to do a revenue neutral rate which is just saying that if we stayed revenue neutral meaning we didn't want any more mills allocated this is what it would be. But again as I said
016in the very first slide we have to allocate 20 mills each year. So if our property valuation goes up the requirement for general goes down and we have to exceed revenue neutral because we have to allocate at least 20 mills. Uh then we submit the proposed budget to the state and county by October 1st and then they start calculating the property tax and they start sending you your tax bills which are due in December and then again in May. As you can see here, the difference between 24 and 25 and 2526 in terms of a $250,000 uh valued property, there was a $29 decrease in the amount of taxes that we were collecting as a school district. So, if your property valuation stayed the same, the decrease was $29 because we lowered our mill levy
017from 59.441 to 58.448, which was a decrease of 1 mil. And as I said, here's the historical context of some of that from starting in 2122. You can see we were at a high of 60.278 and now we're at 58.448. So we are almost two full mills down. We are 1.83 mil lower than we were four years ago. Part of that is because our staffing is getting less. We're needing less and less teachers as our enrollment is declining. We're also needing less and less money because our enrollment is declining while we're trying to maintain our expenses at the same rate. So, as I said, calculating and working property taxes is a very complex thing and I wanted to give just a quick little overview for anyone that would like to be able to have a
018much deeper discussion. will schedule some open meetings um for you to come in and ask questions and I can give a more detailed um understanding of how school finance works and what our current what our past, present and future may look like at USD264 as we do this. As anytime I'm always open for any uh discussion or meeting that you would like to have. So if you have the opportunity would like to have a more of a one-on-one discussion around this, you've got my email address there and you can um call the office and schedule a meeting at any time. So again, looking forward to visiting with you and getting out and u sharing a little bit more about how property taxes work. Have a great day.