The Bowling Green school district is all but set to maintain last year’s real and property tax rate.

On Tuesday, the city schools’ Board of Education unanimously granted the Bowling Green Independent School District’s request to keep the rate at 84.8 cents per $100.

The district estimates that rate will generate $16.9 million in revenue, comprising $1.6 million for facilities and $14.3 million for the general fund; that total revenue due to a rise in property and real estate assessments surpasses last year’s by $802,000, according to the district’s Board documentation. Of that, $457,000 will go to instruction, $153,000 to the building fund, $136,000 to plant maintenance, $40,000 to transportation and $16,000 to tax collections.

While every piece of funding is important, the additional revenue will help pay for last year’s raises, which increased all employees’ salaries by 5% and brought the starting salary of teachers with bachelor’s degrees to $45,000, BGISD Director of Finance Shaunna Cornwell said.

“I think our community is tremendously supportive of our public schools, and that doesn’t go unnoticed by myself or the board,” BGISD Superintendent Gary Fields told the Daily News. “The ability to keep our tax rate flat this year, bringing in a little more revenue because of property value increases, allows us to continue to fight to be competitive in the job market.”

This revenue is expected to increase 4.6%, or $90,000 – surpassing a 4% threshold set by the state.

Anytime revenue growth from the assessments will surpass 4%, Kentucky requires school districts to hold and advertise a hearing, while residents have 45 days to petition a recall vote. Cornwell noted it’s “very unusual” that revenue from assessments surpasses 4%: In the four years she’s been director of finance – and for a good deal before that, she’s heard – BGISD’s revenue from assessments had not reached that threshold.

BGISD’s requested maintenance of its tax rate – and its unanimous approval – comes as cost-of-living expenses and inflation consume a greater portion of salaries, and as school districts struggle to stay competitive with other public sector salaries.

It also comes as the state in recent years has contributed a smaller portion of its foundational per-pupil funding to schools than local taxpayers have. This, according to the nonprofit Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, is due to the state’s foundational program for determining public school funding, Support Education Excellence in Kentucky.

Though the state guarantees school districts will receive a base SEEK funding of $4,326 per student, Kentucky doesn’t contribute that amount. Rather, the state uses a rate of 30 cents per $100 in local real estate and property taxes to calculate a number by which it lowers its own SEEK allocation.

Prior to some five years ago, the state’s contribution to base SEEK funding was greater than the local taxpayers, according to a 2023 analysis of Kentucky Department Education data by the nonprofit Kentucky Center for Economic Policy. However, through at least 2022, the state’s proportion of contributions decreased to the point that it was contributing less to base SEEK funding than local taxpayers were, according to the analysis.

Meanwhile, increases in that per-pupil funding have failed to keep up with inflation, according to data from the Kentucky Department of Education and the Legislative Research Commission as well as the Consumer Price Index.

If SEEK funding was adjusted for inflation every year, BGISD would get almost $618,000 more annually from the state’s base SEEK allocation than it actually does for fiscal year 2025, said Cornwell, who calculated the number using the Consumer Price Index.

And, though BGISD raised salaries, they’re increasingly falling behind other public sector starting salaries, especially since the Covid-pandemic.

BGISD’s starting salary for educators increased 14.9% from $38,282 in 2020 to $45,000 this year. In contrast, firefighters’ rose 23% from $41,600 to $54,000, and police officers’ surged 33.8% from $41,070 to $62,040, according to a BGISD comparison of its starting salaries to recruitment information from the two local departments.

“Police officers and firefighters deserve all the dollars they get – we have amazing firefighters and police officers,” Fields said. “But those three professions used to be considered very similar, and the gap is just widening. Sadly, I don’t know how you would shrink that gap. I don’t know if there’s a will in the state to shrink that gap.”