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Posted
5 minutes ago, Larry T. Spider said:

Not sure how it is taxed but there is a ton of oil out there.

That was the only explanation I could come up with as well, but I also don’t know how it’s taxed.

Posted
5 hours ago, royiv said:

Yeah, I’m trying to figure that one out. It’s more than $200,000 per student that they have enrolled if that number is correct. What the heck is out there that is generating that kind of property tax revenue?

s)

5 hours ago, Larry T. Spider said:

Not sure how it is taxed but there is a ton of oil out there.

 

4 hours ago, royiv said:

That was the only explanation I could come up with as well, but I also don’t know how it’s taxed.

Midland, Pecos, Wink. It's all Permian Basin oil.

Mineral value is added to regular dirt value when it comes to property taxes in Texas, so you get some rinky-dink rural school districts in the Permian Basin with astronomical property tax bases and very few students that have to be educated. That money goes back into statewide coffers in much the same way that Austin ISD has to - just at a different scale.

In the district I attended back in the 1970s-1980s, the boundaries barely reached the city limits. Hell, in parts of town, other districts actually cut into the town proper (still do), which means my district didn't benefit at all from the oil getting pumped out of the ground. We were "property poor," but the district just south of us was based in a town with fewer than 300 people, and they had ALL THE OIL with wall-to-wall carpeting in the high school hallways and an astroturf football field...back in the 1980s. They couldn't spend the money fast enough.

The funding disparities were DRAMATIC before Robin Hood. Shit definitely still needs tweeking/fixing, but the intent at that time was noble because our district boundaries are all kinds of fucked up. San Antonio's very poor Edgewood ISD lawsuit (if I recall correctly) back then was what forced the Texas Supreme Court to declare our property-tax-based system to be unconstitutional because it didn't guarantee even close to an equitable education for all kids.

Personally, I'd do some serious school district consolidation to even things out and then rejigger the formulas once the property tax base disparities were flattened out a little bit after consolidation, but that would never fly politically because suburban districts make out like bandits under the current system.

Where you live in a proximate area shouldn’t dictate whether your kid gets a decent education, especially within a county or metro area, imho. It's kind of dumb to begin with, because what does the value of property in a specific place have to do with funding education, to begin with? I mean, do bigger houses or whatever mean the kids living in them are inherently worth more?

Don't answer that.

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