Superintendent Newsletter April 8, 2022
Dear Cedar Bluffs Families,
May is always busy with Academic Awards Night, Athletic Awards Night, Senior Dinner, Fine Arts Night, Spring Music Concerts, National Honor Society Induction and of course graduation. In the past, we have tried to stay away from Friday before Graduation, knowing that many seniors plan graduation parties on that night and we have always respected Wednesday nights as a family night, so we try not to schedule events on Wednesday evenings. However, this year the NSAA moved District Track from its usual Wednesday in May to a Thursday which made us shuffle all of our plans. So, we apologize in advance but this year we did have to plan an event on a Wednesday in May.
School finance is difficult. In the State of Nebraska, the legislation has set a maximum levy of $1.05 that a school district can ask its taxpayers to pay, along with State Aid to fund the operations of a school. If a school wants more tax money than the maximum levy of $1.05, they must go to the voters of their district and ask them to vote to exceed that amount for things like building bonds. Passing a bond, which is a fancy word for loan, to build a new building or New Track for instances requires a majority of the voters in the district to raise taxes on themselves, even though they may not have kids in school and as we all feel, taxes are already too high. To complicate things further and make passing a bond much harder, last year the legislation in Nebraska passed LB2, which values Agriculture land at 50% for refunding a building bond, which means they have tried to shift the cost of paying back a bond away from Agriculture lands to those that live in cities and towns or commercial property owners. This also means if paying back a bond (loan) would cost 5 cents a year and all or most of a school districts valuation was from Agriculture land, then you would need to set a levy of 10 cents since you are only getting 50% of what agriculture lands are valued at but a homeowner would feel the full 10 cents request. Furthermore, land rich districts like North Bend whose valuation is over a billion can request a 1 cent levy increase and produce $100,000 from that 1 cent. Where Cedar Bluffs valuation is around $300 Million, which means an increase in 1 cent would equate to roughly $30,000. So, if a new track cost’s 6 million and the payments are $600,000 a year, North Bend would raise their levy 6 cents while Cedar Bluffs would have to raise their levy by 20 cents for that same loan. To calculate the levy, increase on your taxes: take the valuation of your home times the levy increase, divided by $100 ($200,000 House x .20 cents=$40,000 divided by $100=$400).
State Aid boils down to Needs minus Resources equals State Aid, actually “Equalization State Aid” since ever school gets some State Funding but not every school gets State Equalization Aid. Cedar Bluffs Public School does receive Equalization Aid because our needs are much higher than our resources. Calculating Needs is complicated and determined by multiple factors including poverty, ELL, Special Education, option students, transportation needs and more, but basically the more students you have the more needs you have. Calculating a school districts resources are easy. It’s basically the districts valuation multiplied by $1.00 equals the districts resources. Although, each year the legislation can manipulate this by changing what the valuation is multiplied by. For instance, if they determine they want to reduce the amount of money the State gives to schools in a year, they would pass legislation to multiple valuation by $1.02 resulting in more resources for the district and less needs that the State is required to pay for, most recently done in 2018-19 school year.
2021-22 TOTAL POSITIVE: 78-Students, 53-Parent(s)/Family Members, 11-Staff
THIS WEEK POSITIVE: 0-Students, 0-Parent(s)/Family Members, 0-Staff CURRENT QUARANTINE: 0
Again, this week we had no reported cases of COVID.
Our 7-day rolling average for ALL absences was 16.43 students per day absent for all illnesses that equates to 3.48 % of our student population. #WildcatPride