This may come as a surprise to many of you, but the school property taxes you pay every year are not going where you think. In fact, a large (and growing) portion of them are being pulled away from our city and being sent to the state. It’s the so-called Robin Hood rule, where the state determined that it is “unfair” for wealthier school districts to have better funded and higher quality schools. Since that time, they have been peeling away money from the wealthier districts and sending it to other districts throughout the state.
On the surface, this doesn’t seem like such a bad goal. We are sure that, by and large, Plano residents like the idea of helping others. But at what cost? Check out this graphic to see the cost to our community:
Do you realize that, in the coming year, the state will “recapture” over $150 million of the city’s school property tax dollars for this program? That’s 27% of our school property taxes, taken from our city and sent to the state! Even worse, the program is projected to pull even more money away from our district the following year (to the tune of 34% in 2018-19)!
Do any of you think, maybe we can do a little better with our own money? Maybe we would like to improve our own school district a little more? How much is too much to have recaptured by the state? Does the Robin Hood program even make sense? Isn’t school funding supposed to be handled at the local level anyway?
The first step to improving the situation is to understand it, so please take the time to read the accompanying article from Community Impact newspaper. Learn more about what is happening, why it is happening, the future of this program, and then tell us what you think. We think this is unfair to Plano, and getting worse. How about you?
