BEATRICE -  The Beatrice Board of Education issued a letter through its president on Wednesday, responding to what it calls misinformation about the district's budget on social media posts.  Below is that letter.

The district levy is capped at $1.05 by state statute when you add the general fund levy ($0.909)
and the building fund levy ($0.139) together to total $1.048. No school in the state can go over
that levy of $1.05 between the general and building fund.

The past year, the district had a general fund levy of 94-cents and the coming year, that levy
would decrease to 90-cents under the proposed budget. The district's building fund levy would
go from 10.6 cents to nearly 14-cents. Increased valuations set by the county will increase our
revenue, it is not a tax asking increase but a by-product of the increase in valuations.

“Regardless of the new building project we would have moved our levy to the building fund to
cover needed maintenance and reconditioning of the old buildings. In short it’s a choice to
recondition old buildings and continue to operate inefficiently in areas of personnel and safety,
or upgrade to a new building that meets the goals of providing a building that meets code in 1.
Safety and Security, 2.Equitable Services for ALL Students, 3. Efficiency of operations in
personnel and programs management”, Trusty said.

The Quality Capital Purpose Undertaking Fund (QCPUF) is a fund utilized by schools outside of
the district $1.05 levy to make improvements to buildings. BPS utilized this fund in 2010-11 to
make lighting and roofing upgrades to buildings in the district. This fund is capped by state
statute at $0.03 cents. It has been in place since the 2011 budget cycle. This coming year BPS is
levying $0.028 cents into the fund to continue to pay off the repairs made in 2009-10. This levy
will be in place until 2030 in order to pay off the debt service for the work.

Therefore the levies are sorted and displayed below in accordance with state statute.


2021-2022 TOTALS/$100 Valuation    2022-23 TOTALS/$100 Valuation

General Fund $0.943       General Fund $0.909
Building Fund $.1060       Building Fund $0.139
Bond Fund $0.000           Bond Fund $0.000
QCPUF Fund $0.026       QCPUF Fund $0.028
Total Levy $1.075             Total Levy $1.076


*Note : The $0.07 - $0.12 cent bond fund assessed from the High School Bond Project was paid
off and eliminated in 2019. Which is why there is no levy for the bond fund.


We hope this clarifies and explains the misinformation.

Eric Trusty
BPS Board President