It is official! The Wickliffe School Board will place a 7.2 mill property tax levy on the May 2025 ballot. We recorded the school board meeting held last night. This is an edited version of the complete meeting.
How much will the 7.2 mill levy cost the Wickliffe residents?
Residents will pay $252.00 per $100,000 of appraised value (Also known as market value or true value) [Calculation: $35.00 x 7.2 mills]
We reviewed the Schedule E from the Auditor’s office and the Cupp Reports from the Ohio Department of Education, and generated the following schedules that may prove helpful in determine where the Wickliffe School District is in comparison to the eight other Lake County School Districts.
The State of Ohio must consider Wickliffe a wealthy community since 78.3% of the school’s revenue comes from local property taxes. The average for nine districts is 66.7% with Painesville being the lowest at 20.7%. We would highly recommend that all concerned Wickliffe residents contact their State Senator or State Legislator and express your outrage at their lack of concern for Wickliffe residents.
When we compare total funding for the Wickliffe School District, we see that their $19,638 is the highest per pupil average in Lake County. Madison is the lowest at $12,808 per pupil.
We thought a look at proficiency scores might be helpful for the Wickliffe residents to determine if they are getting value for the property taxes.
The third grade reading proficiency is the standard that measures a child’s opportunity to succeed in school. We will let the Wickliffe taxpayer determine if 52.3% proficiency is acceptable, and if passing all of the children to the fourth grade is also acceptable.
Here is a schedule of English Language Arts and Math proficiency scores for all grades in the Wickliffe School District for the school years 2017 – 2018 through 2021 – 2022. We see a decline in performance from a starting point that is not acceptable to us.
It appears to us that the decision makers in the community built a new school that the community could not afford. The inflationary costs are definitely impacting the school operating resources. Unfortunately, the seniors and those living on fixed incomes in the city of Wickliffe are slowly, but surely, being taxed out of their homes.
Unless, the State legislators wake up to this pending disaster and provide funding from the State there will continue to be “weeping and gnashing” of teeth in the community, and seniors will be cast out of their homes.
Categories: Community Activism, Lake, Lake County Cities & Townships, Real Estate Taxes, Wickliffe