State Funding will Still GROW under "Save Our Homes"/HB581 for Bartow School System.

The Doom and Gloom of Board Should be Ignored in their quest to "Opt-Out"

By David McKalip, M.D.

The Bartow County School System (BCSS) continues to complain about the efforts to slow growth in Tax revenue under the Save our Homes/HB581 (SOH) measure approved by 69% of Bartow citizens. The “SOH” measure would limit property tax growth for HOMESTEADED Residential property by rate of inflation in the state. Currently that rate is going to be about 1-2% this year.

One of their loudest complaints is that they would “lose state funding” due to growth in the tax base over time, even though only about 30% of the base is limited in growth based on inflation. They mislead by stating that the state actually “takes state funding away” from Bartow County schools. They imply that 5 mills out of all the taxes they collect are redistributed to other counties who are “poor”. THIS IS FALSE. (As confirmed by personal communication to me by BCSS Finance Director Meagan Brown to this author). What actually occurs is that, when determining state funding through a VERY complicated formula, the state deducts the value of 5 mills worth of tax revenue from the amount they give. Even when they do this, the amount of State funding to the local school systems is massive. It is nearly enough to fully cover all salary costs for direction instruction (you know “teaching) for Bartow county Students!

This author has requested that the Bartow County School Board to ask for projections of revenue growth from state and local sources from the Finance Director. At this point, it appears no such data will be immediately forthcoming. We shall see if the Board members at tonight’s Board meeting have the COURAGE to ask for this data from the staff. Instead, to this point, they have been receiving silly forecasts of the loss of “Extra” money they COULD make if there is no limit on growth.

So here is what was discovered on analysis.

The Analysis and the assumptions/methods.

First, the “Quality Beneficial Education” (QBE) calculation is VERY complex. However, there is an online report generator used by the state and the school system to understand how much money they can receive from the state based on these formulas. These generators were used here to download data going back to 2010. The sort of data received is an “Allotment sheet” shown below for 2024.

The data from these allotment sheets were fed into an excel spreadsheet and analysis done on the following (and other data):

• State funding actually received

• Salary for “direct instruction” to students

• 5 mill Discount to state funding allocations

• FTE’s (Full Time Equivalents, or number of hours worked).

Results of analysis - 2010-2025 funding.

The amount of funding received by the Bartow County School Board keeps increasing. This is DESPITE the simultaneous increase in the amount of money “discounted” from the Annual state funding. The Local tax money is NEVER sent to the state and then sent back after the state takes a cut. Instead, the State applies a 5 mill discount to ensure that the local government continue to pay their “LOCAL FAIR SHARE”. (When state funding was approved in the 1980’s, this was put in place to ensure the local government would not mainly depend on state funding and would also fund from local sources in a meaningful way).

The amount of funding from the state based on the QBE formulas wat over $93.18 million for the current year. The amount of local salaries for direct instruction was $94.78 million in 2024-2025 (now). Thus the state covered ALL but $1.6 million of actual salary costs to teach kids.

This phenomenon has been true for many years since 2021. However, from 2010-2020, in 8 of those ten years, state funding EXCEEDED actual salary. Then, for reasons that require further analysis, the total FTE’s dropped, bottoming out at the time of the Covid Pandemic. Then the FTE’s rebounded for the last several years.

The result of the analysis is the the figure at the top of the post and is repeated here.

Notice that even with the 5 mill discount goes up, the STATE FUNDING STILLL GOES UP!

Future analysis of likely state funding.

What of the claims that opting-in to SOH/HB581 would cut actual funding received from the state? THIS IS ALSO FALSE.

A forecast was made in future state spending based on extra low (2%), Low (5%) and current (9%) growth rates in State funding (average for last 4 years). In addition, a forecast of the growth in the 5 mill discount rate was made based on a 5% annual growth in property values (the same rate of growth used by staff to incorrectly forecast a “loss” to the school board recently). Also a forecast on salary growth was made based on the average 8% increase in salary over the last 4 years. Please note that for all but two years (2012, 2017) actual salary has gone up every year since 2010.

Based on this analysis it is highly unlikely the state funding would go down. This is especially true since no matter what, even when enrollment has decreased substantially (from 2008-2020), salary STILL went up.

Based on these forecasts and assumptions, the rate of growth of state funding will NOT shrink. It will not shrink even if the 5 mill discount rate grows from the current $22.5 million to $36.5 million in 2035.

Here is the forecast of growth.

Note that in 2035, at a growth rate of only 2%/year for state funding, the amount of state funding could reach over $200 million. It currently is at $93 million. That is not unrealistic given that state funding has gone up from $53.4 million in 2012 to $93.2 million currently.

Time will tell, but this much is certain: the Bartow County School Board is being fed misinformation and disinformation by the staff at the direction of School Superintendent Clint Terza. If he disagrees with this analysis showing state funding will NOT shrink in over the next several years under HB581, he should direct the staff to show the numbers on funding from state and local sources over the next many years. And they should SHOW THIER MATH and assumptions as has been done here.

In Freedom!