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Show KNOW YOUR SCHOOLS Fourth in a Serfcs of Articles Bf Thomas J. Abplanalp SCHOOL BUDGETING The complexity of budgeting cannot be minimized in' any organization regardless of size or function. In estab- lishing a budget several basic items must be considered,' such as: 1. What the budget will include, 2. how much money is required to meet the needs of the budget, 3. sources of revenue, and 4. keeping the budget balanced. As the school district, city or county governments of Iron County budget each year, their first job is to figure! in dollars and cents what their needs will be and then fronil the assessed valuation of the. county a mill levy will t set that will produce the needed! amount of money, but the mill levy must come within the legal limits of the law at all times. At the present time these organizations organ-izations have set up budgets so that Iron County School District is levying 29.50 mills, the Cedar City Corporation 26.30 mills, Par-owan Par-owan City 28.75 mills, Kanarra-ville Kanarra-ville 10.75 mills, Paragonah 11.75 mills and Iron County 7.20 mills. There is also a state tax levy of 1 mill levied for the state equalization fund for education. For comparative reasons we can add the Iron County School District Dis-trict levy, the Cedar City Corpora tion levy, the Iron County levy and state equalization levy and get a total tax levy in Cedar City of 64.00 mills. This shows Iron County School District receiving 46.09 per cent of the property tax revenue collected from Cedar City. This means that if a property prop-erty owner in Cedar City has a home valued at $14,000 on the state established valuation that he would pay according to the tax formula approximately $180.-60 $180.-60 in tax. Of this amount the schools of Iron County wnuH receive re-ceive $82.61, while the other agencies would receive the remaining re-maining $97.99. A parent with one child in school would be pay-1 ing $82.61 toward his education ' each year and if there happened to be four children in the tax- payer's family the education cost' would be $20.65 per child. This compares to an average per-pu-pil cost of $306.20 for each child in the Iron County School for the school year 1957-58. There seems to be considerable misunderstanding of the amount of the tax revenue that goes toward to-ward education. In fact this question has been raised in the past few days, with the misunderstanding mis-understanding that 80 per cent of all tax revenue goes to the schools. Your individual percentages percent-ages can be figured from your tax notices. Looking directly at the Iron County School District budget we find there are three major categories. cate-gories. These are: maintenance and operation, capital outlay and debt service. These are broken down to Include administration instruction, school services, transportation, trans-portation, school lunch, operation of school plants, maintenance of school plants, fixed charges, capital cap-ital outlay and debt service. In setting a budget boards of education are limited by law as to how much can be levied for each category of the budget. For, maintenance and operation every i district in the State of Utah must levy 12.00 mills for the State Ba- sic Minimum Program. There are special leeway taxes that are authorized by law for enrichment of school programs to bring programs pro-grams up to certain standards. Iron County has an additional 7j mill levy for its maintenance and: operation budget. In the category of capital outlay a school district dis-trict can levy 12.00 mills for building purposes, for purchase of school sites and for equipping school buildings. Iron County at present is levying 10 mills and has been paying for all build ings as they are constructed. Also Al-so under state law school districts dis-tricts are allowed to tax any amount needed for debt service. With the final payment of $35,-j 000 on the East Elementary i School, Iron County School Dis- trict is out of debt and does not need, at the present time, a levy for debt service. Analyzing the anticipated school budget for 1953-59 there is a total anticipated expenditure expendi-ture of $2,152,403.50. The major item in this budget is for capital outlay and debt service, amounting amount-ing to $1,145,303.50, but of this amount only $127,550 was levied this year. The balance is carry over from previous years to complete com-plete the construction of the South HJ?mentary School. The next largest Item In the budget is for maintenance and operation which Is $961,616 with, the major amount of this or $714,. 500 allocated for Instruction. This Includes the salaries of all those involved in teaching children as well as the costs of all instruc-j tional supplies, text and library j books. Another major Item in the budget Is an anticipated expen-iditure expen-iditure for maintenance and operation op-eration of school plants which is set at $,!00. All other items of the budget are broken down ac-. ac-. eordingly and from their totals a I school budget Is set. It should be remembered that during the school budget year money cannot be transferred from one category to another such as maintenance and operation opera-tion to building fund and money can never be transferred from debt service; it can only be used for that purpose. This Is also true of capital outlay, It must be used for capital outlay purposes, but at the end of a fiscal year funds can be transferred from maintenance mainten-ance and operation to capital outlay if there Is a balance carried car-ried over. Each year In June when the ! I budget is being set up the law I requires that there be a budget hearing. At this time the public is Invited even urged to attend the budget hearing and learn for themselves how it is proposed that the money of the school district dis-trict is to be spent. Space does not permit a more detailed analysis of school budgeting bud-geting but if any reader desires more questions be answered mall them to T. J. Abplanalp, East Elementary School, Cedar City. Next week's article will be on basic school philosophy. |