How a school levy works
What's a "mill," really?
One mill equals $1 of tax for every $1,000 of a property's assessed value. In Ohio, assessed value is 35% of your county auditor's market total value — so a home with a market total value of $300,000 has an assessed value of $105,000. A 1-mill levy on that home costs $105 a year. Multiply by however many mills are on the ballot and you've got the annual cost — that's the whole calculation. No hidden formula. Want your own number instead of an example? Use the cost calculator.
Why "voted" mills and what you actually pay aren't the same
Ohio has a law from 1976 — House Bill 920, which works through what the state calls a "tax reduction factor." As property values rise at reappraisal, the state automatically lowers the effective rate on existing fixed-rate levies so the district collects roughly the same dollar amount it did the year the levy passed — not a windfall. Even when your home's value jumps, the school district's share of your bill from an existing levy stays about flat. Sycamore's own finance team calls HB 920 "the inflation guard."
That's genuinely good for homeowners — it's why a booming housing market didn't spike your school taxes. But it cuts the other way for the district: a levy passed a decade ago is worth less in real dollars every year while costs keep rising, even though nothing on your bill changed. It's the main reason a district can't just "wait it out," and the core reason it eventually has to return to voters.
Operating levies vs. bond levies
Operating levies pay for the things that keep a district running day to day — teacher and staff salaries, utilities, transportation, classroom supplies, insurance. Bond levies are different — they fund one-time capital projects, like a new building, and get paid off over time like a mortgage. Confusing the two is common. Sycamore's levy on this ballot is an operating and permanent-improvement levy — see what this levy is for what it funds.
Why "just cut the budget" isn't the whole answer
About 82% of Sycamore's operating budget is people — teachers, aides, bus drivers, custodians, counselors — because educating kids is a labor-intensive job. You can't close a multi-million-dollar gap out of the ~4% spent on supplies. When a levy fails, the choices aren't abstract — they're larger class sizes, cut programs, and reduced busing.
What's driving costs up
The gap isn't from spending more freely — it's that the same services cost more each year while HB 920 holds levy revenue roughly flat. The district's own forecast attributes the rise to:
- Salaries rise with negotiated raises and step increases (the forecast assumes ~3% base plus ~2% step).
- Employee health insurance is assumed to climb about 10% a year.
- Services the district buys — utilities, fuel, transportation, insurance — keep rising with inflation.
- Overall operating costs are projected to grow about 3.9% a year, faster than revenue under HB 920.
Why the state doesn't cover the gap
The Fair School Funding Plan, briefly
Ohio adopted this new school funding formula in 2021 (the Fair School Funding Plan) meant to calculate, district by district, the actual cost of educating a student and how much of that cost the state vs. local taxpayers should cover, based on local property wealth and median income. It was designed to phase in over six years. In practice, each state budget cycle has to re-fund that phase-in — and legislators haven't always fully funded the formula's own numbers, which means the state's share can fall short of what the formula itself calculated a district like Sycamore should receive.
Why Sycamore specifically gets less state support
The funding formula is means-tested: districts with higher local property values and median income are expected to shoulder more of the cost locally, and receive a smaller state share, than lower-wealth districts. Sycamore's relatively high property values work against it here — the formula assumes local taxpayers can cover more of the bill, which shifts a larger share of any funding gap onto local levies rather than the state budget. That's the structural reason a district like ours leans heavily on local levies: when costs rise, the state formula isn't designed to backfill a high-property-value district, so the difference falls to local voters.
What local voters can and can't control
Local voters don't set the state funding formula or the state budget — that's decided in Columbus. What's on this ballot is the only lever Sycamore voters have direct control over: whether to make up the difference locally so the district can keep operating at current service levels.
The exact ballot language
An additional tax for the benefit of the Sycamore Community School District for the purpose of current operating expenses and general permanent improvements, that the county auditor estimates will collect $17,993,971 annually, at a rate not exceeding 6.95 mills (5.00 mills of which is allocated to current expenses and 1.95 mills of which is allocated to general permanent improvements) for each $1 of taxable value, which amounts to $243 for each $100,000 of the county auditor's market value, for a continuing period of time, commencing in 2026, first due in calendar year 2027.
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