M and O Fund

When comparing the amount of money received from FSP and the amount that our district receives from property taxes one can see that a discrepancy is in place.  I can see that our tax base is not nearly high enough to provide the needed revenue to run our school effectively.  Without any commercial taxes and the majority of the property taxes within our district being timber and farm exempt then we take a big hit on funding.  Luckily we do receive allocations that make up for the lack of WADA and tax base necessary to fund a school district.  We receive a REAP G5 small school grant that provides a small amount of funds that does help within our M and O fund.  Our district also has an inflated WADA because Centerville ISD is right around 80% being economically disadvantaged and that also helps to an extent. Mineral and timber money is allocated to a small extent, but nothing like it was some ten years ago.  At one point the amount of monies received from timber sales was astronomical for a school our size, but has now dwindled to almost nothing.  But as I posted in our Wiki group I see that there is talk and legislation that is proposing to start funding from that source more aggressively.  Our funding system continues to be a struggle and brings many challenges to us as a district, but we seem to find a way to continue educating our students to the best of our ability.  My hope is that our legislatures will see that the investment that they make in education is probably the best one that is available to them.  When students are properly educated so many positives will come from them that it will far outweigh the initial cost of funding their education system.