What Keystone Local’s school levies cost a home

$753 a year for every $100,000 of a home’s value, tax year 2025

That is Keystone Local’s part of the property tax bill on a home its owner lives in: 21.53 mills, after House Bill 920’s reduction and the state’s rollback credits. A home the county values at $200,000 pays about $1,507 a year for its schools; at $300,000, about $2,260.

About $120 of every $753 pays for buildings, equipment and the loans for them — its bond and permanent-improvement levies. The rest is day-to-day money.

Its day-to-day levies stand at 20.01 mills on the state’s 2025 rates, above Ohio’s 20-mill floor, so when the county revalues homes their rate is cut and they collect the same dollars.

A home’s value here is the county’s value for it, not a sale price. The homestead exemption, for owners 65 and over or disabled, lowers it more. The county’s, your city’s or township’s and any library levies are on the same bill on top of this: check your own bill for all of it, or see every levy behind this figure.

What would a new levy cost you? →

What homes in Keystone Local are worth, and what they’re taxed on

Since January 2009, homes in the zip codes that make up Keystone Local have risen 93% in value. The district’s taxable value of homes and farms rose 74% — not smoothly, but in steps each time values are reset — and inflation 60%.

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Taxable value is 35% of what the county appraises, for the district’s homes and farmland, so it also grows as new homes are built. Zillow publishes home values by zip code, not school district, so this follows the zip codes that make up the district, each counted by how much of it lies inside; a month in which one zip’s figure jumps by more than any market moves is left out. Values reset every three years, alternating a full reappraisal and an update, on Lorain County’s schedule. Sources: the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce’s District Profile Report and the Department of Taxation’s abstracts, Zillow’s Home Value Index and U.S. consumer prices (CPI-U).

Every Keystone Local levy still on the bill

These are the school district’s own levies. Anything else on the same bill — the county’s, your city’s, village’s or township’s, and any library, park or career-centre levy — belongs to someone else and is not in this list.

8 school levies approved by voters are still on Keystone Local tax bills. The most recent was first approved in 2015, and the oldest in 1976 or earlier — the state’s records do not say which year, and why is below. Together they are 17.48 mills on a home its owner lives in, after House Bill 920’s reduction and after the state’s rollback credits — which is what is actually charged, not what the ballot said.

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1 of them cost you more than the rate says

Ohio stopped paying the 10% and 2.5% rollback credits on new levies approved from the November 2013 ballot onward; renewals and substitute levies for older ones keep them. So 4.64 of these 21.53 mills arrive at full price, and the same millage on an older levy would cost a homeowner about an eighth less. The state’s rate file marks which levies qualify, and that mark is what this counts.

What these purposes mean

Current expense is the day-to-day money — salaries, heat, buses — and it is most of any district’s rate. Emergency and substitute levies are also day-to-day money, written to raise a fixed number of dollars a year rather than a fixed rate. Permanent improvement pays for buildings and equipment and may not be spent on salaries. Bond repayment is paying back money already borrowed, usually for a building, and it ends when the borrowing does. Classroom facilities is the state’s school-building programme, where the state pays a share and the district votes the rest.

Why some of them say “1976 or earlier”

House Bill 920 — the law that stops a levy collecting more money when values rise — took effect in 1976, so that is the first year the state tracks a reduction for. Everything voted before it is filed under 1976 and the certified records do not say which year it actually was. Statewide, 610 of Ohio’s 611 school districts have at least one, and here they are 6.14 of these 21.53 mills. So the honest reading of that row is “half a century ago at least”, not “1976”.

Tax year 2025, from the Department of Taxation’s certified rates: the school levies on one real bill, in the taxing district holding the most of this district’s home and farm value. The year is the one the state files each levy under, which is when it was first approved: a levy voters have since renewed keeps its original year, and an incremental levy’s later steps are shown with the vote they belong to. Each purpose is the state’s own, spelled one way — the certified file files “current expense” under eight different spellings. Inside millage is the up-to-ten mills a government may levy with no vote, and it is the part House Bill 920 does not hold down. Why a bill rises when a value does explains the rest.

Keystone Local’s test scores: 280th of 607 districts

Ohio’s Performance Index scores every district on its pupils’ state tests, from 0 to 120. In 2025-26 Keystone Local scored 89.4: 280th of Ohio’s 607 school districts, in the 40–50% band from the top. The state rates that achievement 4 of 5 stars, and its Progress — how much pupils grew compared with what their own earlier scores predicted — 4 of 5.

• Overall ratingall six below, combined by the state★★★★★
• Achievementstate test scores★★★★★
• Progressgrowth against what past scores predicted★★★★★
• Gap closinghow each group of pupils does★★★★★
• Early literacyreading by third grade★★★★★
• Graduationfour- and five-year rates★★★★★
• Readinesscollege, career, workforce and military★★★★★

These are test scores, and test scores follow family income closely; Progress follows it much less. On the state’s own list, which also ranks community and STEM schools, Keystone Local is 299th of 871.

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Its schools, 2025-26

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Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, Performance Index and Value-Added rankings and the Report Card’s overall and component ratings, School Report Card downloads. Ranked here among the traditional districts (and their schools); a tie shares a rank. Every district and county.

What Keystone Local spends per student

In 2024-25, Keystone Local spent $14,910 per student to run its schools. That pays for teachers, buses, utilities and supplies for its 1,389 enrolled students; the cost of building schools and paying off their loans isn’t included. 55% of it went to teaching, compared with 57% statewide. The figures are the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce’s District Profile Report.

It had the equivalent of 90 full-time teachers that year, 15.4 students for each, against 14.2 across Ohio.

The state’s School Report Card shows $12,824 for the same money, because it divides by weighted pupils: why the two differ.

What Keystone Local pays its superintendent

In 2024-25, Keystone Local paid its superintendent $135,000, typical for a district of its size: the middle half of the 192 districts with 1,000–1,999 pupils paid $125,000 to $145,330. With what a contract usually adds, the retirement pickup, an annuity and allowances, that comes to about $166,000. The salary is 2.0 times its average teacher’s, $67,798; in Ohio’s middle district it is 2.0.

Its treasurer, who keeps the district’s books, was paid $105,000, typical for a district of its size.

From 2005-06 to 2024-25, its superintendent’s salary went from $102,999 to $135,000: +31%, against +43% for Ohio’s middle district and +60% for prices.

The state’s figures; the package is our estimate. Every district in Lorain County, and how the estimate is made →

Where Keystone Local’s money comes from

2024-25: every dollar that came in, from every source — $15,097 a student — and who it came from. It is not all spent on running the schools in the same year, so it does not match the spending above.

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Where the money comes from is the state’s split, by the accounting code each district files it under. A district’s bookkeeping can put local money, such as payments from development (TIF) districts, in another column.

Property tax billed for tax year 2024, on every kind of property in the district (the career-tech district’s levies aside): $8,276 a pupil — of which the state pays $752 as rollback and homestead credits, and owners pay the rest. It is not a slice of the local line above: that line is money received in the 2025 school year, the two cover different years, and not every bill is paid.

Taxable value behind it: $355,287 a pupil, so each mill of tax raises about $355 a pupil. Where the state’s share comes from, including the lottery.