Residents approve budget, board expansion at Greenwood School District annual meeting
Six residents at the Greenwood School District annual meeting on Sept. 22 voted to approve a tax levy of $3,320,066 for the district in the 2025-26 school year, as well as approved the addition of two school board members to make the Greenwood Board of Education a seven-member board as the district continues steps in its consolidation talks with Loyal.
This year, the mill rate is expected to be $7.40 per $1,000 of property value. For a $100,000 home, that would mean a property tax bill of $740. Although District Administrator Joe Green said that the budget for this year will be balanced, with no additional debt being added to the district, and even with a low mill rate, residents can still expect to see a higher tax bill due to the sharp rise in property values in the past year.
“The property value for 2026, the state average was a 12-percent increase,” he explained at the regular school board
Please see Greenwood school, page 10 meeting on Sept. 24, clarifying some details from the annual meeting. “We saw a 20.4-percent increase, with only six percent of that number coming from new construction. That is a very small percentage of new construction. What happened is all of the land property value went up.”
As the district is in a “land rich, cash poor” area, Green said that taxes will still probably be hard for residents this year. There is less state aid being awarded to rural districts this year due to that sharp rise in property value, and no equalization aid was put into the state budget this year to offset that.
“Even with a low mill rate, our taxes will still go up because the property values are higher,” he said. “There was no equalization aid put into the state budget, which punishes public schools. Property values go higher and we are viewed as richer, so there is a drop in state aid. But we are land rich and cash poor people. There will be a bigger burden on taxpayers because the state isn’t covering as much.”
The residents at the meeting approved the budget for the 2025-26 school year, as well as salaries and reimbursements for school board members to remain at their current rates. The board president earns $1,750 and all other members of the board earn $1,750 annually, while reimbursements on a per diem basis were kept at $125 per day when duties require the board member to be absent from their job.
The board also presented residents with an additional question this year to increase the number of board members from the current five up to seven members. With the school in talks to consolidate with Loyal, Green said there is a need for the school to have equal representation when the two boards join and make collective decisions.
“This is a part of consolidation,” he said. “When we get to the point where we approve it, we have an 18-month timeline, the two boards come together to make decisions until July 1 [2028] when we have a new school and a new board. Greenwood has five members, Loyal has seven members. We’re not equally represented. In order to have equal representation, we need to add two more members so we can have seven members.”
The two additional seats on the Greenwood School Board will be added after the April 2026 general election, with both seats being at-large. The new seats will not affect any of the current members’ areas of representation. The residents at the meeting approved the addition of the new school board seats by a unanimous vote.
