However, he pointed out that the new law also established standards and a system for assessing the quality of education the schools are providing. To meet the requirements laid out by the court, the Legislature sought to devise a funding system where there would be a correlation between per-pupil spending and school tax rates. However, the Legislature also wanted to give local communities some flexibility in how much they wanted to spend. What it came up with was a system where equal tax rates would generate equal per-pupil spending. That requires property-wealthy communities, which can generate a lot of money at a fixed tax rate, to subsidize poorer communities that can't generate as much at the same fixed rate.
Most communities supplement the state grant with additional local taxes.
But it is not like the old system, where the local taxes were generated by applying the local rate to the local property tax base. Not all school budgets have been completed. But with a handful of communities still to report, Talbott said school boards are asking for an overall increase of between 7 and 7.5 percent. That is bigger jump than last year, which the average increase was about 5.5 percent, and Gov. Howard B. Dean and others have warned that more school budgets may be defeated this year.