By: Cade Wilson –

On August 22, a new budget was approved by the LPS School Board for the 2017-2018 school year. The new budget would increase by 4.56% from last year, which, at first, doesn’t seem like much until you consider the fact that 4.56% amounts to around $18.3 million extra dollars, making this year’s budget about $420.8 million. Roughly 82.8% of this goes into instruction, and another large portion goes into the projected increase of students at LPS.

The district estimates that around 950 more students have enrolled in Lincoln schools for the 2017-18 school year – bringing estimated total enrollment to almost 42,000 students. LPS served almost 41,000 students last school year, an increase of 12 percent or 4,450 students over the last five years.

According to Principal Brent Toalson, a portion of the budget will go to ensuring that the needs of students are met. For example, these needs may include kids with after school needs, kids with a wide range of learning needs, and kids who are English language learners. Another portion of the money is also going to the staffing and equipment of the new middle school school at LPS – Moore Middle School.

So how does this affect you? Well, the increase in budget isn’t coming from nowhere. The budget relies a lot on the revenue granted by property taxes, so your parents, or the tax-paying adult you live with, may see an increase in the amount of money they’ll be paying. In fact, the assessed valuation (the value placed on a property that is used in calculating taxes) will increase by 9%.  

Highlights from the School Board meeting show that Superintendent Steve Joel applauded the board for approving the budget, but acknowledged that this can be a controversial topic. “Taxation is a very emotional issue,” said Joel. “It brings a lot of opinions…In fact, there is a lot of debate about how public education should be funded.”

This debate is something that students should pay attention to as it could directly influence the opportunities made available to them. If you want to follow the School Board and what they are doing for our schools, check out their website for minutes and meeting dates.