Lincoln (Neb.) - Oct. 11, 2000 - In a move to help make sense of some of the taxation and expenditure issues facing Nebraska's public schools, the Bureau of Business Research at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is developing a comprehensive new database.
Available online through the bureau's Web site (http://www.bbr.unl.edu), the database will help policymakers and the public assess such issues as the effect of a school district's size on per-student cost, a school district's property tax incidence (who pays for what), and the influence of geographic size and rural-urban character on landowners' property tax burdens.
"The new database is unique because it combines per-student expenditure and property tax data," said Andrew Agena, a research analyst in the bureau who described the new database in an article in the October issue of Business in Nebraska, the bureau's 10-times-yearly newsletter.
Agena (pronounced ah-guh-nah) said more than eight data sets from the state departments of Education and Property Assessment and Taxation have been combined and summarized to provide a snapshot of each Nebraska school district's spending and taxation.
"The per-student expenditures for districts smaller than 30 students exceeded the state average by 28 percent," Agena wrote in describing early findings in the database. "Per-student expenditures were the lowest for districts with student membership in the 1,000 to 10,000 range. . . . From a cost standpoint, the most efficient districts have from 700 to 7,000 students, with little variance within this range."
Agena described the database as a work in progress and said ongoing
research using a Geographical Information Systems overlay and census data
will allow an analysis of the rural-urban dichotomy in Nebraska public
schools.
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