Palm Beach County school leaders OK a $5.6B budget for 2025. Here's what to know

Palm Beach County's School Board has given final approval to a $5.66 billion budget with a lower tax rate for the 2025 fiscal year.

The budget once again includes the estimated impacts of the state's expanded voucher program, and although increases in property values are cooling off, the school district budget is balanced with a slightly lower tax rate.

The new tax rate levies nearly $6.31 for every $1,000 of taxable property value, a decrease from the $6.45 levied last year.

Unlike other counties in Florida, Palm Beach County's schools continue to grow and bring in more per-student funding from the state. Budget documents show the district expects 900 new students to enroll in public schools next year.

Budget documents also show it expects about 6,600 new students in Palm Beach County to use taxpayer-funded vouchers to attend private school next year — down from 8,400 new students they expected to use the vouchers last year. These students' vouchers create a transfer of $202 million from public schools to private schools, budget documents show.

Six of the seven board members voted to approve the budget Wednesday. Board member Alexandria Ayala voted against the budget, but did not publicly explain her reasons for opposition.

The budget will go into effect July 1, 2025.

Rising property value vs. lower tax rate: What will you pay?

In contrast to local governments, which set their own tax rate to pay for services such as law enforcement and waste pickup, a school district's rate is largely determined by state lawmakers. In order to qualify for hundreds of millions of dollars in education funding, school districts are required to levy the state-controlled tax rate.

This year, Florida's legislature approved a modest increase in the amount of state funding awarded to districts per student served: State funding increased by 2.71% over last year.

Although local property values have been soaring in recent years, increases in 2024 home values appear to be coming back down to earth — meaning agencies that use money from property taxes aren't likely to see the same influxes of cash as they did previously.

In 2022, the total taxable value of all property in Palm Beach County was $234 billion. That value jumped 22% in 2023 and the next year, it grew again by nearly 16% to $332 billion.

In 2024, the total taxable value of homes rose to $356 billion, representing a 7% increase. District Chief Financial Officer Heather Frederick said she doesn't expect to see double-digit increases in taxable value in future years.

But rising home values are still good news for public schools.

In 2025, the school district's tax rate could have been lowered to $6.09 from last year's rate of $6.45 and the district would have collected the same amount of money. Instead, the tax rate for the upcoming year will be set at $6.31 and bring in $2.15 billion to the school district.

That means homeowners will pay slightly less if their property values stayed the same, but more if their home's value rose in the past year.

A home that maintained an assessed value of $300,000 will pay $41 less this year in property taxes under the new tax rate — to $1,894 from $1,935.

Katherine Kokal is a journalist covering education at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at kkokal@pbpost.com . Help support our work; subscribe today!

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Palm Beach County school leaders OK a $5.6B budget for 2025. Here's what to know