What communities tax — and what those taxes can buy
Missouri school taxes are quoted as rates, but the same rate does not produce the same resources everywhere. This page explains what a school tax costs a household, how operating and debt-service levies differ, how often voters approve increases, and what district debt, building spending, and cash balances show. Start with the dime test if you want to see why local tax capacity varies so sharply.
What this page shows
- 211 of Missouri’s 513 districts levy below the state’s $3.43 performance benchmark, but 194 of them already charge the most the law permits without a public vote.
- 327 of Missouri’s 516 districts carry a debt-service levy. The median operating levy is $3.60; the median total school levy is $4.12.
- 174 districts carry no long-term debt, including 161 rural districts. Borrowing capacity follows the property tax base, just as operating revenue does.
The dime test tells the district’s story. This tells yours.
The dime test on the Funding page is about what a district can raise. This is about what you’d actually pay — a real home value, run against a real district’s real total levy, operating and debt service both.
The dime test says how much property. This says what kind.
When a district taxes property, it isn’t taxing one thing — it’s taxing four kinds: homes, businesses, farmland, and vehicles and equipment. The state taxes each kind differently. Farmland is the big surprise: it’s taxed on what it can grow, not what it would sell for — which quietly shrinks the tax base of farm country. This is the first time this breakdown has been published district by district.
The details: how Missouri taxes each of the four kinds of property
Your house is taxed on 19% of its market value. A store, factory or office is taxed on 32% of its market value — the heaviest treatment of real estate. Your car, truck, boat, or a farmer’s combine is “personal property,” taxed on 33⅓% — heavier still. And farmland is taxed on 12% of its agricultural productive value: not what the field would sell for, but what the soil can grow, set by the state on a grade scale (RSMo 137.017).
That last one matters enormously and almost nobody outside school finance knows it. A quarter-section of good Missouri cropland might sell for $1.5 million and be carried on the tax rolls at a small fraction of that. The district that educates the farmer’s children never sees the market value of the land at all.
Four maps of Missouri, and they are not the same map
Switch the selector and the state reorganises itself each time. The median district in each kind of community is made of quite different stuff:
| Median district’s tax base | Homes | Farmland | Businesses | Cars, trucks & equipment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| City (14 districts) | 52.8% | 0.1% | 25.0% | 20.3% |
| Suburb (45) | 65.7% | 0.0% | 15.6% | 16.4% |
| Town (69) | 50.5% | 1.6% | 20.0% | 25.9% |
| Rural (388) | 47.5% | 8.2% | 11.4% | 29.8% |
Read the full tax-base analysis — homes, trucks, businesses and farmland
A suburban district raises two-thirds of everything it has from residential property — a base that is stable, appreciating, and hard to move away. The typical rural district raises 30% of its base from personal property: pickups, combines, grain trucks, livestock trailers. Ninety-six districts — 92 of them rural — raise a third or more that way.
Personal property is the worst possible thing to build a school budget on. It is assessed at the highest rate in Missouri law (33⅓%), which makes it feel like a rich vein — and then it depreciates every single year, and it can be sold, traded, or simply driven across a county line. And it goes with being property-poor: the quarter of districts most dependent on personal property hold a median $113,008 of assessed value per student; the quarter least dependent on it hold $166,991.
What actually predicts a wealthy district is not houses and not farmland. It is commercial property — the correlation between a district’s business share and its assessed value per student is +0.33, the strongest of the four. Districts with somewhere to shop, work and warehouse are districts with something to tax.
The intuition is clean: farmland is assessed on productive value, so farm districts should be property-poor. We checked. They are not. The correlation between a district’s farmland share and its assessed value per student is −0.10 — effectively nothing. Districts that get 10% or more of their base from farmland hold a median $121,800 per student; everyone else holds $122,350. That is the same number.
Why the story fails: farm districts have few students. A thin tax base divided by a small enrollment lands in the same place as a thicker base divided by a bigger one. Missouri’s property-poverty problem is real — the dime test above is an 18-fold gap — but farmland is not what causes it.
The honest farmland finding is the one in the numbers above: in a state with 27 million acres of farmland, agriculture is 1.4% of the school tax base. Not a small share — a vanishing one. That is what assessing land on what it grows, rather than what it is worth, does to a school district’s ledger.
Statewide, Missouri’s $143.0B school tax base is 57.8% residential, 20.4% commercial, 20.4% personal property and 1.4% agricultural. The mix varies sharply by locale: the median suburban district is 65.7% homes; the median rural district is 29.8% personal property and 8.2% farmland. Business share is the only component that correlates meaningfully with property wealth per student (+0.33); farmland share does not (−0.10).
Two districts can levy the same rate and be taxing entirely different economies. A suburb taxes appreciating houses; a rural district taxes depreciating machinery and land assessed on what it grows. That difference does not show up in a levy map, and it does not show up in a spending map — but it shapes how stable and how growable a district’s revenue is over a decade.
These are assessed values, not market values, and the two cannot be reconciled for farmland. Because Missouri assesses actively farmed land at 12% of agricultural productive value rather than 12% of sale price, dividing the agricultural figure by 0.12 does not recover what the land is worth. The gap between the market value of Missouri farmland and its taxable value is therefore larger than these figures can show, and we will not put a dollar amount on it — doing so would require a soil-grade model we do not have. This is one year of data (tax year 2024); we cannot yet show how the mix has shifted over time.
The rate communities set
The operating tax levy is the property-tax rate a district sets to fund day-to-day operations — teachers, buses, heat, books. The revenue any given rate produces still depends on local property wealth (see the dime test), which is why effort and result come apart in Missouri.
The gap is not small. 327 of Missouri’s 516 districts carry a debt-service levy on top of the operating rate shown here. Statewide the median operating levy is $3.60, but the median total school levy is $4.12. Webb City, for instance, levies $2.75 for operations plus 68¢ for debt service — $3.43 in total, which is what its residents actually pay. So if this map makes your district look like a low-tax district, check the total before you believe it — the district lookup shows both numbers side by side.
Read the full analysis — the statute, the arithmetic, and why this levy is not a measure of effort
Here is the problem with that. Of those 211 districts, 194 — 92% — are already levying every cent their tax rate ceiling allows them without a public vote. For 209 of the 211, the ceiling itself sits below $3.43. Exactly two districts in the entire group could reach the standard by board action. Every other one would have to go to its voters. They are taxing at the legal maximum available to them, and it is still not enough to meet the state’s own number.
And the number itself is not a measure of effort. The correlation between a district’s operating levy and its property wealth per student is −0.00 — not weak, but nothing at all. Knowing what a Missouri community taxes itself tells you precisely nothing about whether it is rich or poor.
Hold the rate perfectly still and watch what happens. Sixty-four districts levy the identical operating rate of $2.75 — the same effort, to the cent. In Thayer R-II a dime of that rate raises $57 per student. In Pettis Co. R-XII the same dime raises $702. That is twelve times the money for exactly the same tax. Both are red on this map. Both must file notice. Both are presumed to have made insufficient local effort.
The full analysis, with the statute and the arithmetic, is on the Methods page.
How often do Missouri voters actually raise a school levy?
The law’s implicit answer to a district below $3.43 is: go ask your voters. So we went and counted how often that has actually worked. The Missouri State Auditor flags every tax rate that changed by voter approval, district by district, year by year. We read seven years of those reports.
Twenty-two of those winning districts were still below the $3.43 performance levy immediately after at least one increase — winning a levy vote does not by itself clear the bar. But raising the operating levy at the ballot box is not rare: districts across the state do it every year.
Read the full investigation — who has won a levy vote, why the failures are invisible, and the Harrisburg case
| Tax year | Voter-approved operating-levy increases (school districts) |
|---|---|
| 2018 | 19 |
| 2019 | Auditor report not obtained — not counted |
| 2020 | 24 |
| 2021 | 16 |
| 2022 | 14 |
| 2023 | 21 |
| 2024 | 20 |
| 2025 | 25 |
| Total, seven reported years | 139 |
The 45 successful district-year increases recorded in 2024–2025. 2024: Clinton, Cole County R-II (Blair Oaks), Cole County R-V, Doniphan R-I, Gasconade County R-I, Grain Valley R-V, Lathrop R-II, Niangua R-V, North Callaway County R-I, North Harrison County R-III, Orrick R-XI, Platte County R-III, Puxico R-VIII, Raymore-Peculiar R-II, Rich Hill R-IV, Rockwood R-VI, Southern Boone County R-I, Sparta R-III, Valley R-VI, Waynesville R-VI. 2025: Belton 124, Carthage R-IX, Dadeville R-II, Fairfax R-III, Green Ridge R-VIII, Holden R-III, Hudson R-IX, Jasper County R-V, Knob Noster R-VIII, La Plata R-II, Maplewood-Richmond Heights, Montrose R-XIV, Oak Grove R-VI, Otterville R-VI, Ozark R-VI, Park Hill, Puxico R-VIII, Raymore-Peculiar R-II, Rockwood R-VI, Schuyler County R-I, Smithville R-II, Strasburg C-3, Sunrise R-IX, Tipton R-VI, Willard R-II.
So the remedy the statute points to needs only a bare majority and can be attempted every year — and on the corrected record, roughly 20 districts a year do win it.
The obvious next question is the one that matters most: of the 211 districts below the performance levy, how many asked their voters and were refused? A district that tried and lost is telling a very different story from one that never tried. So we went to find out. Missouri does not keep this information — not anywhere, not in any form we could obtain.
The Secretary of State publishes certified returns for state offices and statewide measures; local ballot issues are certified by county election authorities and are not compiled by the state. DESE publishes nothing on levy elections. RSMo 162.201 does require county clerks to certify school election results to the state board of education — but read it closely and it governs the formation of new districts, not tax levies. Ballotpedia, the only national aggregator of local ballot measures, states its own scope plainly: it covers measures within the 100 largest cities in the United States, and state capitals. In Missouri that means Kansas City, St. Louis and Jefferson City. It reaches 13 of the 211 districts and is structurally blind to the other 198 — 94% of them. Oregon County, whose district actually won a levy election in 2023, has an empty page.
The records do exist — scattered across 76 separate county election authorities, and no public body has ever put them together.
Somebody has, though. The bond underwriters. The firms that run these campaigns for districts keep score, because knowing which communities say yes and which say no is their business. L.J. Hart & Company, one of the largest school-finance houses in Missouri, advertises “Election Results” as a standing service line. So the tally is kept. It is simply kept privately, by the people selling the bonds — and not by the state that is about to declare 211 districts guilty of insufficient effort. We have asked; if we obtain it, it will appear here.
Sit with what that means. From 1 July 2026, Missouri requires 211 school districts to justify themselves against a standard most of them cannot reach, and the statute’s implicit remedy is: go and ask your voters. The state can tell you exactly which districts succeeded — a successful election changes the tax rate, and tax rates are recorded meticulously. It keeps no record whatsoever of which districts tried. The single fact that would show whether “insufficient local effort” is a fair description of these communities is the one fact Missouri has never thought to write down.
In April 2026, Harrisburg R-VIII in Boone County put an operating levy increase to its voters. They said no — 300 votes to 330. Thirty votes. The district is now working through the resulting budget shortfall, and its board is putting the question back on the ballot — which Missouri law expressly permits, at any time, with no waiting period.
Harrisburg asked. Harrisburg was refused. And because the tax rate never changed, Harrisburg appears in no state dataset as having tried at all. It is simply another district sitting below $3.43 — indistinguishable, in Missouri’s own records, from a district that never went to its voters. When it files the notice the statute now requires, any shortfall it reports will be “deemed to be a result of insufficient local effort.”
Four hundred and one of its neighbours voted in the school board race on the very same ballot. This is not a community that failed to show up. It is a community that turned out, considered the question, and narrowly declined — and the state has no way to know it, and no interest in finding out.
We found Harrisburg by going to the Boone County Clerk and reading the certified canvass. We do not know how many others there are, because that would mean doing the same thing 76 more times — which is exactly what we intend to do. Source: Boone County Clerk, Summary Results Report, 7 April 2026 — Final Official. Corroborated by the Columbia Missourian and KOMU.
Across seven reported tax years (2018 and 2020–2025; the 2019 Auditor report was not obtained), Missouri districts won at least 139 voter-approved operating-levy increases — roughly 20 a year statewide, across 121 districts, including 20 in 2024 and 25 in 2025. Twenty-two of the winning districts were still below the $3.43 performance levy immediately after at least one increase.
Raising the operating levy at the ballot box is not the near-impossible remedy the law’s “go ask your voters” language might suggest — it succeeds somewhere in Missouri almost every year, and the constitutional bar is a simple majority, not the supermajority most people assume. But winning is not the same as solving the problem: 22 of the 121 winning districts were still below $3.43 immediately after at least one increase, and Missouri keeps no record at all of the districts that asked and were refused. A district that tried and lost — like Harrisburg R-VIII — looks, in every state dataset, exactly like a district that never tried. That gap is the real finding here: not that the ballot remedy is fake, but that the state has no way to tell a community that tried and failed apart from one that never tried at all.
This count sees elections that passed. The Auditor records tax rates, not ballots, so a district that never appears may never have asked its voters — or may have asked and been told no. This site therefore says a district has not succeeded, never that it has not asked. We searched for the failures and established that no such record exists in Missouri at any level above the individual county clerk (see above) — so the distinction cannot presently be drawn by anyone, including the state. We also do not hold the 2019 report, so an increase approved in that single year would be missed.
The whole school tax bill, not just the operating rate
The map above shows the rate that pays teachers. This one shows the rate that leaves your pocket — operating plus the debt-service levy that repays bonds for buildings. 327 of Missouri’s 516 districts carry a debt-service levy, so for nearly two-thirds of the state these two maps are different maps.
How the levy has shifted over time
Pick a baseline year to see how much each district’s operating levy actually moved — the rate it truly charged, not the ceiling it was allowed to charge. Blue means the levy rose; red means it fell.
Why some levy rates rose — and why the largest drops are rollbacks
The biggest drops are not frugality — they are the Hancock Amendment. When assessed valuation rises, Missouri law forces a district to roll its levy back so revenue stays roughly flat. Every one of the five largest declines is a metropolitan district whose property values climbed: Webster Groves fell $2.00 (from $5.39 to $3.39), Center 58 $1.85, Jennings $1.48, Valley Park $1.47, Francis Howell $1.41. Their tax bills did not fall by anything like that much; their rates did, because the base underneath them grew. Van-Far R-I is the same story in miniature — the Huck Finn Solar Project nearly doubled its tax base in one year, and its levy rolled straight back.
The largest increases run the other way — small, property-poor districts that went to their voters: Cooter R-IV (+$1.31), Festus R-VI (+$1.23), Green Ridge R-VIII (+$1.18), Mirabile C-1 (+$1.12).
Who is building — and who is borrowing to do it
The levy maps show what districts charge. This one shows what they have built, what they still owe, and what they hold as cash and investments. Use the selector on the map to switch between the three.
The gradient runs straight down the locale ladder. Among districts that do carry debt, the median city district owes $14,903 per student, the median suburb $13,826, the median town $10,409 — and the median rural district $7,166. The same ordering shows up in what they actually spent on buildings last year: $2,211 per student in city districts against $1,062 in rural ones. The buildings follow the tax base, exactly as the dime test predicts.
Those are not all spendable operating reserves. The Census file combines cash and securities held in debt-service sinking funds, bond funds and all other funds; it does not identify how much is unrestricted. Districts also need cash to bridge uneven revenue timing and unexpected costs, especially when a small enrollment leaves little room for error. This one-year public file cannot determine whether any district’s balance is prudent or excessive.
The Missouri Association of School Administrators advises districts to distinguish recurring costs from one-time resources, plan across multiple years and treat reserves as a safeguard rather than a permanent funding source. That is planning guidance, not evidence that any district’s reserve is too large or too small; the circumstances behind each balance differ. Administrator perspective: Missouri Association of School Administrators, Tight Times initiative (April 2026).
A tax rate measures effort, not capacity
Two districts can charge the same rate and raise completely different amounts. A complete comparison therefore needs three numbers: what the rate is, what property sits underneath it, and how much of the total bill is paying for buildings rather than current operations.
Look at the total levy, not only the operating rate. Debt service can materially change what appears on the school line of a property-tax bill.
Pair every levy comparison with the dime test. The same ten cents can raise roughly eighteen times as much per student in one K–12 district as another.
A district below a statewide levy benchmark may already be at its legal ceiling. The rate alone cannot show whether a community has room to act without another public vote.
No debt can mean no recent construction, not superior management. Cash and investments also include restricted funds; the public file cannot identify how much is available for operations.
Use the district lookup to see operating and total levies side by side, then compare what a dime raises on the Funding page.