2024 Technology Levy

View a sample of the ballot language

Despite recent increases in state funding and budget reductions, the district’s current financial trajectory is not sustainable based on current expenditures and revenues. This is caused by several factors:

• Increased costs in major spending areas: salaries, benefits, utilities, transportation, food, contracted services
• New and important investments made into key areas like literacy and student safety and well-being without new revenue or reductions to other programs to offset the costs 
• Continued significant underfunding of special education and English learner services, especially by the federal government
• No substantial changes made to the operational structure of the district to adjust for declining student enrollment over the past ten years, which has led to inefficiencies
• The primary state general education funding formula has not kept up with inflation over the past 20 years (see chart below).

The levy will bring an additional $20 million in resources to students and families in our schools.

Well-resourced schools enhance our community and are essential to helping students, families, and communities thrive. Strong schools attract people to a community and increase property values.

MPS has already started the hard work of transforming our district, having faced a $110 million deficit in the 2023-24 school year, due primarily to the sunsetting of federal emergency relief funding and significant cost increases.

This levy is one way that MPS can increase resources for students and bring our funding more in line with districts in the metro area who are allocating more dollars per-pupil from tech levy funding than MPS.

MPS is working to increase enrollment and retain families and continues to advocate for funding and support for education at the state and federal levels.

The proposal is to ask voters to approve an additional $20 million. This would fully fund the technology budget and allow for the general funds to instead go to other district needs. 

MPS is not proposing to significantly increase spending on technology or add new technology initiatives.

USE A TAX CALCULATOR

The estimated monthly tax impacts for a $350,000 residential homestead would be $7.80 per month. For a $600,000 residential homestead, it would be $14.58 per month.

*The amounts shown in the table above are based on school district taxes for the proposed capital project levy only and do not include tax levies for other purposes. Tax increases shown are gross increases, not including the impact of the homeowner's Homestead Credit Refund ("Circuit Breaker") program. Some owners of homestead property may qualify for a refund based on their income and total property taxes. This would decrease the net tax impact for those property owners.

**For commercial/industrial property, the estimates above are for property in the city of Minneapolis, including the estimated impact of the Twin Cities Fiscal Disparities program.

Minneapolis residential property taxpayers pay among the lowest amount of school property taxes in Hennepin County. 

View a comparison of Hennepin County districts

The 2024-25 technology budget is $33 million, which represents approximately 3% of the total approved 2024-25 budget.

Factors include technology upgrades, cybersecurity concerns, software licensing increases, data management and analytics, and IT infrastructure maintenance and upgrades.

Capital project levies, or tech levies as they are called when they go toward a district’s technology budget, are authorized at a percentage of the tax base. The chart below shows the capital project levies converted to a per-student amount for comparison purposes with other metro school districts.

View a comparison of capital project levy authority of other metro area districts

The expiring operating referendum authorities (approved by voters in 2016 and 2018) will be renewed by the School Board at its Aug. 6 regular business meeting. There will not be an operating referendum question on the 2024 general election ballot.