School levy rate will drop next year

If you don’t think school finances are complicated, the rebuttal would be New Hampton Superintendent Jay Jurrens’ budget presentation to the School Board during a special meeting last week.Enrollment in the school district dropped 19 students from last year to this year, but “weighted enrollment” dropped even more, by 32. Because a school district’s spending authority is tied to enrollment, that would mean less money to work with, but then there’s the “budget guarantee” that gives districts 101 percent of the revenue they received in the previous year.It can be, in a word, confusing, but the bottom line is this: Jurrens had relatively good news for property owners in the district.That’s because the tax levy rate for next year that board members in all likelihood will approve at next Monday’s meeting will decrease by 2.2 percent, dropping from $12.11471 per $1,000 assessed valuation this year to $11.84879 for the 2019-20 school year.“Honestly, it’s formula driven,” Jurrens told board members. “I wish I could tell you this was all us, but the reality is we’re plugging numbers into a formula the state gives us and that’s how we’re getting to that number. ... It’s good news for property owners but it’s really because of the formula.”— For more on this story, see the March 11 New Hampton Tribune.