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Is the difference made up by federal funding now then? (I don't know as much about federal school funding but it doesn't seem to scale by the number of students

• ghaff 4y ago
  No. They have to balance the budget which may mean taking money from other things like public services. (Although something like 60% of property taxes already goes to schools.) And, if they can't make that work, there will need to be a vote to raise property taxes.
  • olddustytrail 4y ago
    How does that work? If we fix the school budget as it is, then obviously if you only have one student and one family there's not enough money to run it. So presumably adding more students and families is what makes it affordable. Why does that stop? What's the inflexion point?
    • ghaff 4y ago
      You have costs that are fixed in the short run and you have variable costs and costs in between--e.g. you can tweak up class sizes for a while. You can also increase fees, etc. The town hasn't had particularly rapid growth but one of the driving factors behind the rezoning the town just voted on is that there's a new regional high school being built and the town has to chip in a bunch of money for that. It's not that a few students more or less is an issue but if there were a big new development with a lot of families with school-age children that would likely be a problem for the town.