Sarasota County voters voted on March 20th to continue the school tax referendum by a landslide margin of around 79 to 21, its highest margin since it was originally voted into effect in 2002.

The policy taxes Sarasota residents $1 for every $1,000 of their taxable property value. The money collected from this tax is contributed directly to Sarasota County public schools, where it is utilized to reduce or cut a number of expenses, including teachers’ pay, science, technology, engineering, and math programs, music, art, drama, and dance classes, campus security monitors, certified school counselors and behavior specialists, extracurricular activities, Summer school and dropout prevention programs, the length of the school day, and more.

This tax raises around $56 million a year for schools. One selling point of the policy is that the money it raises enables schools to extend their school day length by half an hour a day, which adds up to more than a year of extra instruction for students who stay in the Sarasota County system from kindergarten to high school.

Seeing this referendum pass is something that always moves me, as this topic is very near and dear to my heart. Children are undeniably the future of our community, so supporting our education system is paramount to sustaining Sarasota’s community. Seeing that such a high majority of people are of the same mind is inspiring and makes me truly proud to call myself a Sarasotan.

You can learn more about the school tax and how the Sarasota County School Board campaigned for it in Elizabeth Dijinis’s article in the Herald Tribune.