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If you're like me, your local property taxes are high compared to anyplace else you've lived. And if you go to look at where it's going, you'll find that the schools take the majority of that tax revenue. So one might conclude that Beavercreek City Schools are luxurious, wealthy district with exceptional facilities and state of the art everything. Come visit our high school for a concert or sporting event and you will find that is not the case. Our facilities are old compared to neighboring districts.
So how can our taxes be so high but our facilities be so old? Where does all the money go? It turns out that's not quite the right question. The reason Beavercreek Property Taxes are so high is about where the money is not coming from.
Most of my property tax goes to our schools.
The histogram to the left shows the expenditure per pupil for all districts in Ohio. Beavercreek City Schools is shown in orange and is over $1700 below the state average! We have an exceptionally low-cost school district.
Despite spending below the state average, our schools outperform most other schools as the figure to the right shows. We are consistently in the top 20% in the state.
Taken together, it's clear that our schools are extraordinarily efficient. So why are property taxes so high in Beavercreek? The answer stems from the State Education funding plan.
The Legislature of the State of Ohio has decided that Beavercreek City Schools is a "wealthy district" because we have $359,082 worth of taxable property per pupil, which is about $90k more than the state average. As such, they reasoned that we can support our own schools, so they only pay 10% of the cost to educate each pupil, requiring local taxpayers to fund the remaining 90% ourselves. What's worse, they haven't fully phased in the plan for 10% and the cost per student they use in the calculation is roughly $3000 less than the state average!
What the state calculations for school funding fails to understand is that district wealth does not translate into individual resident wealth. Just because some of our residents are wealthy and we have some large commercial properties does not mean that all our residents can afford a high tax rate! Less wealthy residents and retired senior citizens are struggling to keep up with increasing property taxes.
How do we cut local property taxes?
How do we cut local property taxes?
Beavercreek must unite as a community to demand the State of Ohio fund public education at a reasonable level that's consistent with the Ohio constitution. If the state is in fact the lead on education issues, then the state share should be at least 45%. For towns like Beavercreek, this would allow us to substantially cut our local tax burden for schools. We should find allies with other cities struggling with poor state education funding.
Beavercreek should join the Vouchers Hurt Ohio lawsuit. For only $2 per student, we can help fund the lawsuit to end the $1,000,000,000 annual tax give-away to private schools. And we also send a clear message to our legislators that you cannot underfund public schools and give billions away to unconstitutional private schools in our state. Public tax money belongs in accountable public schools.
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