The school district line, and why it moves the bill more than the township does

Most of the bill is the district

Every parcel in Montgomery County carries the same 5.952 mills for the county and the community college. Municipal rates run from 0.05 mills in Worcester Township to 19.0 in Norristown. School rates run from 25.03 in Upper Merion Area to 56.68 in Cheltenham, and in almost every row of the county’s millage table the school column is the biggest number by a distance.

Reporting on Lower Merion’s 2026 budget put the shares plainly: about 78% of a Lower Merion resident’s property tax funds the school district, 12% goes to Montgomery County and about 10% to the township. Horsham comes out the same shape — at 44.837 total mills, roughly 80% of the bill is school tax and about 6% is the township. An eight percent township increase moves a tenth of the bill.

What one mill is worth, and why the rates differ

Jenkintown School District has 1,840 taxable parcels in total, inside a borough of six-tenths of a square mile. One mill in Lower Merion raises about 27.6 times what one mill in Jenkintown raises, so Jenkintown has to set a rate of 54.4368 mills where Lower Merion sets 36.5017 to fund a much larger budget.

Everything in that table is a count of assessed dollars. It describes parcels and nothing else, and no part of it is a statement about anybody who lives in either place, or about any school in either district. This page carries published millage, published budgets and published boundaries. It does not rate schools and it is not qualified to.

The districts’ own budgets fill in the rest. Jenkintown adopted a $21,456,955 budget on 8 June 2026 at an average assessed value of $152,658, and published the impact: about $281 more a year at that average, $552 on a $300,000 assessment. Its rate has risen six years running, from 44.495 to 54.4368 mills, up 22.3%. Lower Merion adopted $349,207,724 on 15 June 2026, down 0.96% from the prior year — spending fell and the rate still rose — on a median household assessment of $250,680 carrying a school bill that went from $8,841 to $9,150.

The extremes, and the pairs that share a post office

Countywide, the sharpest pair is Cheltenham Township at about 73.5 total mills against Upper Merion Township at about 36.6. Twice the rate on the same assessment, two townships apart, with the King of Prussia Mall and the office parks around it holding Upper Merion’s school rate down at 25.03.

The pair that shows up on listings is Wissahickon against Upper Dublin: 26.6 mills against 41.1418, both reachable from an “Ambler, PA 19002” mailing address.

Same district, different total

Identical school mills, 8.35 mills of spread. On the district’s median homestead assessment of $159,060 that is roughly $8,444 a year in Souderton Borough against $7,451 in Lower Salford, about $993 apart, before the homestead exclusion.

Wissahickon does the same thing: Lower Gwynedd 33.775, Whitpain 36.502, Ambler Borough 42.367. North Penn runs 41.951 in Upper Gwynedd to 47.780 in Lansdale Borough. And Hatboro-Horsham is the cleanest case of all — Horsham Township and Hatboro Borough pay an identical 36.160 school mills and total 44.837 against 55.237, a gap of 10.4 mills, or $1,040 a year per $100,000 of assessed value, entirely municipal. The two do not even share a border; a strip of Upper Moreland and Warminster runs between them.

The Act 1 index, and the exceptions that get past it

Act 1 caps how far a board can go without asking anybody. The index for 2026-27 was 3.5% for the districts here, and several landed on it exactly:

• Lower Merion 35.2674 to 36.5017, +3.50%, adopted 15 June 2026. The board filed no preliminary budget and certified in January it would not exceed the index.
• Cheltenham 54.7700 to 56.6800, approved 9 June 2026, against an index maximum of 56.6869.
• Jenkintown 52.596 to 54.4368 — the index maximum was 54.4368, matched to four decimal places.
• Abington 38.55 to 39.8992 on the base rate, also +3.50%.

Two districts went further, legitimately. Abington carries a 1.3738-mill referendum millage on top of the base, approved by the Pennsylvania Department of Education on 26 March 2026 for the middle school project, so the non-referendum increase was 3.50% and the increase on the bill was 7.06%. Souderton Area used a special-education exception to adopt 37.3842 mills on 18 June 2026, a 4.35% increase against an index maximum of 37.0788 — 0.3054 mills over the cap, raising $891,818 above it, on a 6-3 vote. The district’s stated driver is special-education spending up $11 million since 2020 against an $800,000 increase in state special-education funding. Wissahickon adopted 26.6 mills on 1 June 2026, a 5.18% increase, on the same kind of exception.

Elsewhere the range was wide. Norristown Area took 1.50% against an available 4.6% index, the most restrained increase found. Pottstown took 2.00% to 45.28 mills after holding 41.96 flat from 2019-20 through 2024-25. North Penn went to 33.3280, +3.49%. Upper Moreland went to 41.200, +4.27%.

Homestead relief varies by district too, and by a factor of five

Each district sets its own homestead exclusion from its state allocation, by resolution, by 30 June. Montgomery County’s total allocation for 2026-27 is $80,244,656.01. The Department of Education has not published its per-homestead estimates for 2026-27 yet, so the newest published figures are 2025-26:

From $149 to $777 inside one county, a spread of 5.2 times, and the Department’s own caveat travels with every figure: each district calculates its own relief and the actual amount will differ from the estimate. The pattern is worth understanding — the districts with the lowest millage tend to receive the least relief, because the formula sends the most state money where the tax burden is heaviest and the local base thinnest.

The district also takes half your earned income tax

Under Act 32, a resident’s local earned income tax is levied by the municipality of residence and the school district of residence, and the two are summed into one total resident rate. The employer withholds the higher of that rate and the work-location non-resident rate, and a six-digit PSD code routes the money. Berkheimer collects for all sixty-two municipalities except the three Boyertown Area townships.

The range across the county is 0.00% to 2.10%, and forty-five of sixty-two municipalities sit at exactly 1.00%. Lower Merion Township and Upper Merion Township levy nothing at all — the municipality at zero and the school district at zero. Norristown is the highest at 2.10%, driven by a 1.60% municipal rate. On $150,000 of household earned income that is $0 against $3,150 a year, which is more money than any millage difference in this county moves.

Perkiomen Valley is the one district charging 0.90% on the school side, which puts Collegeville, Trappe, Schwenksville, Skippack, Perkiomen and Lower Frederick at 1.40% or above whatever the township does. Jenkintown Borough levies no municipal earned income tax and lets the district take the whole 1.00%.

One qualifier for commuters: an earner working in Philadelphia falls under the Sterling Act, and the credit for the city’s non-resident rate — 3.425% from 1 July 2026 — generally absorbs the whole local earned income tax. The excess is not refundable. So that gap bites hardest on income earned outside the city, which is most of this county’s own job base.

What to do next

Find the district on the parcel record, take its 2026-27 millage from the county sheet, and check the district’s own adopted budget where the two might disagree. Then call with the district and the municipality, and one licensed Pennsylvania mortgage lender calls you back — usually the same working day, and by the end of the next working day at the outside. Or put both names in the form and send it along. Eight tenths of your tax bill deserves ten minutes.