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State Report Card: Ensuring Equity
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Property Value Per Student Compared to Tax Rate
View/download Property Value Per Student Compared to Tax Rate on
Owner-Occupied Residential Property (PDF, 30KB)
WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING AT
This chart shows information about each district’s effort to generate revenue to support its municipal services, including its schools. The chart on the next page, Relative Tax Capacity and Effort, shows information about each district’s ability to generate revenue compared with its efforts to do so. The data are supplied by the Rhode Island Department of Revenue, Division of Property Valuation and Municipal Finance. We thank that office for its cooperation and help.
The property value per pupil is calculated by dividing the total assessed value for all the real property in the district by the average daily enrollment of public-school students residing in that district. The tax rate is set by the local government, expressed as a dollar rate per $1,000 of property value. The tax-rate information is for owner-occupied residential property. Thus a $10.00 tax rate on a $500,000 house will raise $5,000 in tax revenue. A house valued at $250,000 will raise only half that amount, or $2,500. A poorer community, whose houses have an average value of $250,000, would have to raise its tax rate to $20.00 per $1,000 in order to generate $5,000.
With the exception of the wealthiest communities in the state, homestead-exemption plans and classified tax rates have been used to moderate the tax burden on owner-occupied houses so that tax rates on owner-occupied houses in the poorer urban communities are not significantly higher (and may be lower) than tax rates in suburban communities. The urban communities also may tax commercial property at higher rates than the owner-occupied residential-property rate.
Note: Jamestown and Little Compton send all high-school students out of district on a tuition basis. The high-school students in these two districts are counted as part of the total number of pupils in determining the per-pupil expenditures.
Note: The particularly high per-pupil expenditure in Foster-Glocester was caused by school-construction costs, which are accounted for as part of the School Department budget.
WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR
You will notice the inequities among the 36 districts resulting from the value of their property. Municipal salaries, such as those of teachers, cost roughly the same from community to community, so poor communities must tax their citizens at higher rates to generate the same amount of revenue as wealthier communities. (Note that this tax burden in the urban districts falls on owners of commercial property as well as on owner-occupied residential property.)