Last month we wrote about the opposition to a school property tax shift plan from Fox Chapel School District through a forum and news coverage of another District, this time in Armstrong County, Apollo-Ridge reveals that the leadership of this District is not in favor of the idea either.  The board president noted that “the devil is in the details” since if a district was utilizing property taxes to retire debt, that portion of the tax would not go away.  It is not clear if that is the case for Apollo-Ridge currently.  The board president also noted that property taxes paid to the county and municipality would not go away since they are not part of the shift.  The board passed a resolution in opposition to the plan.

The article noted “another aspect that concerns Apollo-Ridge officials is a dollar-for-dollar reimbursement on per-student spending. They say that would tilt funding toward wealthier school districts.”  That is what we have pointed out previously: if a district is raising a lot of money locally it is going to get back a lot more from a tax shift that moves all revenue to the state than districts that do not raise a lot locally.  Based on financial data from the Department of Education, Apollo-Ridge, on a per-pupil basis, receives more from the state ($9,347) than it raises locally ($6,260).  With three other districts in Armstrong County only one (Freeport) raises more locally than it receives from the state, but not by much ($6,132 state, $7,880 local).