Across Georgia, public school districts are refusing to go along with a reduction in property taxes – all while raking in taxpayer dollars like never before.
As an example, consider these eye-popping facts about the Burke County School District, which serves about 3,700 students just south of Augusta:
- Between 2019 and 2024, Burke’s per-pupil funding soared by 84% to almost $31,800 – the highest figure in the state, and more than double the state average.
- During the same timeframe, the district’s reserve fund balance ballooned by $160 million to a total of $216 million – almost $60,000 per pupil.
- In 2024, the district took in $42 million more than it spent. The surplus was so great that the district could forgo local tax revenues this year and still have more money in the bank (per pupil) than every other district in the state.
Do you want to know how much your local school district has in reserves?
We have data on the reserves for every school district in the state.
You can access it here. From there, you will find reserves going back to 2019.
It seems Burke has more money than it knows how to spend. And yet, like far too many of its peers around the state, the district wants to reject Georgia’s new floating homestead exemption.
This exemption would protect residents from huge future tax hikes by limiting increases in the assessed value of a home to the rate of inflation. The measure passed the General Assembly with overwhelming bipartisan majorities, and Georgia voters approved it last fall by a 63% to 37% margin.
Burke is the most extreme case, but similar scenes are playing out elsewhere. School districts (along with counties and any cities that levy property taxes) have until March 1 to opt out of the exemption if they so desire.
As school boards in particular rush to dodge the new exemption, they’re demonstrating just how out of touch they have become. That’s because Georgia’s school districts are more flush with cash than ever before.
Again, Burke County is at one end of the spectrum. But let’s look at the median school district in terms of reserves per pupil. That would be Toombs County, where world-famous Vidalia onions are grown. That district has piled up more than $4,000 per pupil in the bank, a figure that has nearly quadrupled in just five years. Meanwhile, Toombs’ per-pupil revenues have leaped by 46%; taxpayers are sending the district almost $5,000 more per student than in 2019.
Cumulatively, Georgia’s 180 city and county school districts have more than doubled their reserves to a staggering $6.5 billion. (That figure does not include state charter schools, which I excluded because the number of state charters varies significantly from year to year. If included, their reserves would add about $300 million more to this total.)
These cumulative reserves amount to more than $3,800 per student. Like the total, that figure has more than doubled in five short years.
Incredibly, $6.5 billion is about a billion dollars more than the state of Georgia has in its official “rainy day” fund. The state does have more money in the bank when counting all types of reserve funds, but it also has to serve 11 million residents. Per capita, the state’s reserves don’t come close to the combined piggy banks of its 180 school districts.
Then there are the revenues. Ignore all the pleas for more school funding that you can read on everything from bumper stickers to social media. In reality, Georgia’s schools have seen their funding soar. Per-pupil revenue statewide has grown by 45% in five years.
Put more plainly, Georgia’s school districts had almost $8 billion more funding in 2024 than in 2019, despite serving 20,000 fewer students – and despite student achievement falling since then by almost every measure.
I’ll let that sink in for a moment.
It should gall every Georgia property owner to see their school board blithely voting to reject tax relief. If school board members didn’t listen to the voters last fall, the voters should send them a different message when they’re up for reelection.
