Dear Wayne Township Constituents,
On Tuesday, May 7th, those of you who live in the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township will be voting on a property tax referendum. Below is the information that is on the school district’s website about this. Also, here is the link that Dr. Butts has created for the community presentations:
I attended one of the presentations that was held this week; I learned a lot from it. There are three more presentations coming up during March, and dates and locations are at the end of the article. While you may attend any of these three, the one closest to our district will be held at Chapel Hill United Methodist Church, located at 963 N. Girls School Road, on Wednesday, March 13th. It will start at 6 p.m. These are an opportunity for you to learn more and they also allow written questions from the audience at the end.
City-County Councillor District 6
MSD Wayne Board of Education Approves Resolution for May Referendum
February 5, 2019
The Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township Board of Education has approved a property tax referendum for the May 7 ballot. The referendum would generate an additional $10 million per year for eight years for the school district.
The monies would permit the district to close the gap in its educational fund brought on by state funding that has not kept pace with inflation. The added revenue would provide resources for MSD Wayne to continue enhancing student security, and allow the district to continue to replace the educational fund dollars currently spent on transportation and preventive maintenance.
The additional revenues will permit the district to avoid reducing academic programs critical to the successes demonstrated by its students each year. The referendum monies will also allow MSD Wayne to continue to recruit and retain the highly effective teachers and provide services that contribute to its students’ multiple successes. Those successes include more than $18 million used in college scholarships, 17,000 dual credits earned, and a district graduation rate of 91 percent.
A number of factors in recent years have continued to erode key sources of funding for MSD Wayne:
- $9.8 million (38 percent) lost since 2014 due to reductions in the state’s Complexity Index (poverty factor)
- A per pupil increase in state funding of $1 since 2014 versus an 8.3% increase in the Cost of Living (COLA) Index
- Continued instability in property values in Wayne Township, resulting in a reduction in property tax revenue for the district in two of the last five years
- Continued losses in property tax revenue totaling $102,788,545 in revenue lost since 2008 due to state-imposed limits
Since 2009, school districts in Indiana, similar to those in the surrounding states, have utilized referenda to help close the funding gap created by property tax caps.
The referendum that will appear on the May 7 ballot will ask voters to increase property taxes by 35 cents per $100 of assessed valuation. For the median homeowner in MSD Wayne, this will represent an increase of $8.00 per month for homeowners under 65 and $4.33 per month for homeowners 65 and over who qualify for the deduction.
The MSD Wayne Board of Education approved the resolution for the referendum at its regularly scheduled January 28 meeting.
MSD Wayne Superintendent Jeff Butts will present information on the district’s fiscal situation and the May referendum at a series of community meetings. The dates and locations of these meetings are listed below:
State of the District
Community Meeting Schedule
All meetings start at 6:00 p.m.
Monday, March 4
Ben Davis Christian Church
701 South High School Road
Wednesday, March 13
Chapel Hill United Methodist Church
963 North Girls School Road
Monday, March 18
The Upper Room of Indianapolis
3829 South Farnsworth St.
