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Brown County Superintendent Pushes For Referendum

Brown County Schools are asking for help from taxpayers after facing declining enrollment and escalating operating expenses.

They've placed a referendum on May's ballot that would increase property taxes for homeowners by 8 cents for every $100 of a home's value. The money, which the schools say would total around $1 million annually, would go into the operating general fund.

That fund is currently funded solely by the state. It covers the salaries, wages and benefits for most of the school district's staff. The amount is calculated by the funding formula the state uses, which Superintendent David Shaffer says is inadequate, failing to account for factors rural schools face.

"I think that the formula doesn't recognize some limitations that we have in a rural countywide district," Shaffer says. "For example, we have three elementary schools that are spread out throughout the county. It would be very difficult here to close a school. That's typically a move that a school corporation would consider as it starts to become stressed with its general fund operation. We've got kids that are on the bus an hour and ten minutes maximum. If we were to close a school, that would increase bus time for kids, and I'm pretty sure our community would not support that."

One of every eight cents brought in from the referendum, Shaffer says, would go towards maintaining the Career Resource Center, which opened five years ago. Most of the remainder will be spent paying teachers' salaries, which Shaffer says are not competitive with surrounding districts.

"We haven't been able to be able to pay our teachers what we think is a competitive level of salary for several years now, so we've lost ground, we've lost some quality teachers to other school districts who can pay more," Schaffer says.

The referendum will appear on the May 3 ballot.

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