07/16/2026
I’ve been listening to the debate about the tuition tax the last few days. I wanted to share some facts for an informed opinion. This portion of the local tax is strictly for special education and cannot be used to fund any other expense. The tuition tax is not only a moral obligation to children with special needs, it is a legal obligation. If a school district does not have adequate funding to meet these obligations, lawsuits will most likely outweigh the program’s expense. For Appoquinimink, this becomes a larger challenge as the district’s tax base, from which to apply a tax rate, is much smaller than the rest of the county. Equalization helps alleviate this inequality in local school taxes by taking the smaller tax base into account and subsidizing the district with state funding. However, this formula is not used for the tuition tax, so the funding relies on the local tax base alone.
Tangentially, the 2027 preliminary budget’s only rate increase is the tuition tax, for the sole purpose of funding the rising needs of special education.
If the state extended the equalization formula to include the tuition tax, it would not only help our community with the rising cost of special education, it would help the kids who need it most. In my opinion, by not doing so, they’re borderline discriminating against the special needs students in our community.
