Willow Springs School Board discusses Tax Rate, Policy, & School Year

The Willow Springs R-IV School Board of Education started off their August meeting discussing the tax rate before moving on to the usual school business. 

 

Superintendent Dr. Marty Spence began the meeting at 5:50 pm on August 12 to talk about the tax rate. He started with a short history covering the school tax rate collections. This started with the 1982 Missouri School and Highway Tax, Proposition C that established a one-percent sales tax for education and one-half of the proceeds to be used to reduce the operating tax rate. Next, was the 1998 Missouri School Operating Levy Amendment, known as Amendment 2 at the time. This allowed school boards to set the operating tax levy no higher than $2.75 without a public vote. Spence said that the school currently has “a dollar something” tax rate during the meeting. The last legislation discussed was a 2000s bill that requires school districts to publish and conduct public tax rate hearings. This also required that tax rate increases approved by voters be adjusted by reassessment the summer following the tax rate election. 

 

This year, the tax rate was not published in Howell County News. According to Spence, it was posted at the central office, at the school board room door, and on the district website. 

 

While discussing the tax rate, Spence showed a slide that showed the 2023-2024 tax rate was at the current limit $2.75. He also compared this with other local schools West Plains, Mountain View-Birch Tree, Cabool, Houston, Ava, Thayer, and Mountain Grove. Of the 525 public schools in Missouri, only 61 of these have a $2.75 tax rate. This includes Willow Springs, Ava, Mountain Grove, and Thayer. He also mentioned that the school had a one-percent decrease in assessed valuation in the most recent assessment. This was a jump in a different direction as the previous year had a seven percent increase and the year before that had a ten percent increase in assessed valuation. Spence suggested that the school board keep the current tax rate and, toward the end of the board meeting, this was approved by all board members.

 

Chris Waggoner presented the Professional Development Plan to the board for the upcoming year. The details of the plan were given to the board members, and he pointed out which pages contained changes to the plan. He mentioned that a committee was made with three staff members from each building participating. Waggoner said that earlier that day, Connie Hamilton had met with the committee to discuss questioning in the classroom to better engage all the students. He mentioned upcoming regional conferences that teachers will be attending but did not give specifics during the meeting. It was mentioned by Dr. Spence that a minimum of one percent of the budget that the school receives from the state be used for professional development.

 

The board discussed the BBFA policy, commonly known as the conflict-of-interest policy. This is an ordinance of the Willow Springs R-IV School to establish a procedure to disclose potential conflicts of interest and substantial interests for certain individuals. The BBFA policy comes from the Missouri Department of Ethics and schools adopt the policy yearly. This was accepted by all board members.

 

The board also heard from building representatives who were all gearing up and getting ready for the new school year. One of the largest topics covered is the new pick up and drop off procedures. For more information on those, please watch our video at HowellCountyNews.com. School officials said they will be on site to help parents during pick up and drop off to help everyone get into the new flow of things. They also discussed improvements to the school buildings over the summer. These included a new playground surface for the elementary, improved lighting for the middle school building, which is celebrating its centenniel anniversary this year, and the addition of an advisory period in place of Bear Time at the high school.