The East Newton R-6 School District set the tax rate for this school year during Thursday’s school board meeting.
“The tax rate for this budgeted school year is $3.2459 and the previous year was $3.2500,” said Todd McCrackin, superintendent of East Newton School District. “Basically, the decline is from the debt services, the debt that we owe in the assessed valuation.”
The tax rate hearing was held prior to the 7 p.m. meeting and approved during the regular meeting.
McCrackin noted the tax rate is set every year in August.
“Basically, there are two components of it: there is the operating levy and there is the debt services levy,” he said. “And our operating levy is $2.75, which is the minimum that the state will let you levy unless you go to the voters and ask for an increase. We have not done that, so that one will stay at $2.75. And then that debt services levy is basically the money that you levy in order to pay off those outstanding bonds, which we passed several years ago for the renovations at the various campuses. The debt services levy is .4959.”
Last year, McCrackin said, it was actually .5000.
McCrackin also noted the enrollment numbers for the 2010-2011 school year.
“As of Thursday afternoon, I checked the final enrollment and we had 1,640 students (K-12) enrolled, obviously not all of them are present, but that is what is on the books right now,” the superintendent said. “That is up about 40 students district-wide from last year.”
Of the three campuses (Granby, Triway and the high school), McCrackin said the biggest campus is at Granby, with the number of students around 670. Triway is running about 450 students, and the high school has an enrollment of 520.
“After Labor Day, our numbers would go down a little bit because some kids may have transferred to schools that do not start until after Labor Day, so they have not sent for the students records yet,” he said.
In other business, the board:
• Approved the declaration of surplus property (old library books from Triway).
• Approved the milk bid from Hiland.
