Concord school system prepares referendum vote
ELKHART, Ind -- The time has arrived for Concord community schools to gather the community in effort to pass the new referendum.
With the referendum vote finally arriving, the Superintendent says that the student education is the number one priority.
"We’ve been able since 2014 to 2019 we’ve had the 19th highest academic growth. So, money has gone towards the classroom," said Superintendent Dan Funston.
The last referendum vote was approved in 2014 but it's set to expire this December.
Now the district is hoping those living in the district will approved the new referendum.
The big difference in the new referendum, is the property tax ask is decreasing by 20%, which means property tax owners will pay less.
The ask is .32 cents per $100 of property value.
The last referendum was just over .40 cents per $100.
"The referendum makes up about 10% of our operation and education fund budget put together and so a loss of 10% of that budget would be pretty dramatic for the district and for the programming we're able to offer our students," said Funston.
Although things like technology and construction are something the school wants to to invest more in, they also believe there's another factor that relates to the current state of the school systems.
"We’d also like to continue to the one to one program you know imagine if we didn’t have that during COVID so we’d like to be able to continue to be able to provide devices to our students with the money," said Funston.
The Concord community says that they've created a way for each individual to know how much they would pay for each piece of property they own that will allow community members to know how the passing of the referendum will impact them.
That website is:https://supportconcord.com/