The School Board sets your school tax rate Thursday night, and you can talk first

The School Board votes Thursday night on a $1,558,622,009 budget for this school year and on the property tax rate that pays part of it.

The rate the superintendent is recommending is 6.264 mills. Last year the board adopted 6.272. That is a decrease of eight thousandths of a mill.

The hearing starts at 5:30 p.m. in the auditorium at 40 Orange Street in St. Augustine, and on Webex. It is a nine-item agenda and public comment is item 9, after both votes.

Here is what that means for your household.

A mill is one dollar of tax for every thousand dollars of taxable value. So 6.264 mills is $6.264 for every thousand. On a home with $250,000 of taxable value, the school portion of the bill works out to $1,566. On $400,000 of taxable value, $2,505.60.

Taxable value is not the same as what your house would sell for. It is what is left after exemptions, and it is the number printed on the notice the property appraiser mailed you in August. Find that number, divide by a thousand, multiply by 6.264, and you have the school district’s share.

The rate is four numbers, not one

The single figure hides four separate levies, and they do different jobs. From the resolution the board will vote on:

Required Local Effort is the biggest piece and the district does not set it. The Legislature does, as the local share of the state school funding formula. Basic Discretionary is the operating money the board itself controls. Capital Improvement is the construction and maintenance levy, capped by state law at 1.5 mills, and it is at the cap.

The 1.000 mill on the third line is the one voters approved in November 2024. The agenda item describes it as money “voted on by the community” to “recruit and retain, invest in safety and student welfare and preserve and enhance educational programs.” It is written in the resolution as a levy not to exceed four years, which means it comes back to the ballot.

Last year’s 6.272 included a fifth line the resolution called a Prior Period Adjustment, at 0.007 mills, and a Required Local Effort of 3.017 rather than this year’s 3.016. Those two lines are the whole of the eight-thousandths difference. The other three levies are unchanged.

The budget, by fund

The board took a first vote on a tentative version of all of this on July 30. Between then and Thursday the total grew by $6,300,577.

Against last September’s adopted budget of $1,538,580,801, that is $20,041,208 more, or 1.30 percent. The general fund, the one that pays teachers, carries $27,799,705 more revenue than last year’s adopted figure and $17,175,324 more in budgeted expenses.

Two lines moved the other way. Capital Outlay came down $3,494,224 between the July tentative and Thursday’s final. Debt Service revenue is $10,581,208 below last year’s adopted number.

The agenda items give the funds and the totals. They do not give the countywide taxable value the rate will be applied to, and the Tattler could not retrieve the presentation attached to item 5.01 from the public agenda. So this story can tell you the rate and the budget. It cannot tell you the total dollars the levy raises, and it does not guess.

What already happened, and what happens Thursday

The board approved advertising the tentative millage and budget on July 23, advertised it July 28, and held the first public hearing July 30. That calendar is the sequence Florida’s Truth in Millage law requires, and the district wrote it into its own July agenda.

At the July 30 hearing the board adopted the tentative millage and the tentative budget in two separate 5-0 votes. Kelly Barrera moved the millage and Bev Slough seconded. Anthony Coleman moved the budget and Linda Thomson seconded. Jennifer Collins voted yes on both.

Thursday’s agenda has two action items. Item 7.01 adopts the millages. Item 8.01 adopts the budget. Both are recommended by Superintendent Brennan Asplen and were drafted by Budget Director Amy Snodgrass, Chief Financial Officer Cathy Weber, and Deputy Superintendent Paul Abbatinozzi.

One note for anyone who goes looking on their own before Thursday. The district’s Budget Department page, retrieved Wednesday, still runs a narrative written for the 2025-26 year. It gives per-student funding of $9,146.63 and an enrollment of 51,420, both labeled 2025-26. Those are last year’s numbers on a page with no year in the heading. The numbers in this story come from the board’s own agenda items instead.

Two more district meetings are already noticed for this month: the Half-Cent Sales Surtax Citizens Advisory Committee at 4 p.m. Sept. 21 at the Fullerwood Training Center, 10 Hildreth Drive, and a special School Board meeting on out-of-field teachers at 9 a.m. Sept. 22 in the auditorium at 40 Orange Street, with a workshop immediately after.