Opinion ID: 1992041
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: organization and funding under l.b. 839

Text: Nebraska school districts are statutorily divided into three primary categories: a school district maintaining only elementary grades under the direction of a single school board (Class I); a school district maintaining both elementary and high school grades under the direction of a single school board (Classes II, III, IV, and V); and a school district maintaining only a high school under a single school board (Class VI). In 1991, the Legislature enacted bills requiring that Class I districts either be made a part of a Class VI district or affiliate with a Class II, III, IV, or V district providing K-12 education. See Neb.Rev.Stat. § 79-426.28(1) (Reissue 1994). Pursuant to this enactment, property taxes are collected within the various groupings that amount to K-12 education, such that each property owner helps to support the K-12 education that each child in the public school system ultimately receives. Id. Some Class I districts have chosen to comply with § 79-426.28(1) by becoming part of an affiliated school system, which includes a Class VI high school district and each of the Class I school districts whose students will attend that particular Class VI high school. Revenue for affiliated school systems is raised in the same way used by other K-12 school districts, in that a common levy is assessed within the entire affiliated school system as if it were a single district. § 79-438.12(1). Those Class I districts which have not joined an affiliated school district are required to be part of a Class VI district. Neb.Rev.Stat. § 79-402.17(1) (Reissue 1994). Prior to the passage of L.B. 839, the unaffiliated Class I districts were not treated like either the affiliated Class I districts or the K-12 districts for property tax purposes. Rather, each property owner in a Class I district paid only that amount of property tax necessary to support that particular Class I district and the Class VI district into which it feeds. Under L.B. 839, a Class VI school district is grouped together with each Class I school district which is part of the Class VI district to create a Class VI school system. § 79-101.01(1)(c). The Class VI school system comprises one high school and each of the schools whose children will attend that high school. The Class VI school district and the Class I school districts maintain their independent school boards, and all continue to operate as entities independent of each other. See Neb.Rev.Stat. § 79-401 (Reissue 1994). L.B. 839 further provides that funding for Class VI school systems will come, in part, from a common levy: Commencing with the 1995-96 school year, the general fund property tax requirement of the Class VI school district and each Class I school district or portion thereof in a Class VI school system shall be certified to the county superintendent and county clerk for computation of a Class VI school system tax levy. The proceeds of such levy, upon collection by the county, shall be distributed to the districts in the Class VI school system in amounts which are in proportion to the amounts of the general fund property tax requirement certified by such districts to the county superintendent and county clerk. § 79-438.13. Another section of L.B. 839 impacts state equalization aid. Thereunder, the formula for establishing the amount of equalization aid due each individual Class I district within a Class VI school system is based on the resources and needs of all individual Class I and VI districts within a Class VI school system as a group, rather than on the actual resources and needs of each individual district. § 79-3806(5)(b). The practical effect is to make Class VI school systems similar to affiliated school systems with regard to equalization aid, and to render all Class I districts alike for equalization aid purposes. Swanson owns property in school district 31, a Class I school district in Cherry County, Nebraska, located about 30 miles outside the town of Valentine. School district 31 is not part of an affiliated school system. Rather, it is part of school district 6 (Valentine High School district), an unaffiliated Class VI district. Swanson's property is thus located in both school district 31 and the Valentine High School district and is within what has become, under L.B. 839, the Valentine Class VI school system. Under L.B. 839, each individual and autonomous district within the Valentine Class I school system will establish its budget as it did prior to L.B. 839, including the amount of state aid it will receive and its resulting general fund property tax requirements. Each district will then certify those property tax requirements to the county clerk and superintendent. The county clerk and superintendent, after totaling all tax valuations and tax requirements of all districts within the Valentine Class VI school system, set a common levy in an amount sufficient to generate the aggregate property tax requirements for all districts within the system. The tax revenues are then disbursed to each Class I district based on its budgeted tax requirement, irrespective of the amount of tax dollars actually generated from property within that individual district.