Annual Changes in School Total Disbursements
The topic of school spending regularly surfaces whenever the Legislature debates property taxes. Senators continuously wrangle over whether additional spending caps on schools should be part of any property tax reform or state aid legislation. To gain a better understanding of trends in school spending, Nebraska Farm Bureau gathered data from the Annual Financial Reports filed by K-12 schools with the Nebraska Department of Education and examined spending across all schools between school years 2016-17 to 2019-20. For purposes of this analysis, total disbursements reported by schools were used to measure spending.
The findings of the analysis are presented on this webpage. For each school, a chart shows the percentage change in total disbursement in each school year as well as the average change across the four school years. The same information statewide for all schools is shown below. Across the four-year period, spending growth averaged 2.89 percent. The highest average growth in disbursements for a school was 17.8 percent, while the lowest was -2.86 percent. To find the spending information for a specific school, simply enter the school name in the search box.
