1. Does school funding come mostly from property taxes?
The answer here in Seattle is yes having seen some breakdown chart in some government document a while back.
2. What determines the amount of property tax?
Thanks for sharing that link about how in Canada the tax collection amount works backwards from a goal amount.
My understanding is that in the US, your property tax is assessed annually and the person doing it presumably uses market comparables to determine the taxable price - I don’t know if they work backwards from a target, but that sounds odd to me.
In my county they will definitely work back from a goal. The county will determine the budget for the coming year and adjust the tax rate to meet that budget. If assessed values go up 8% but the budget only goes up 4% the board of supervisors will lower the tax rate so the increase in property taxes only meets the 4% needed. This is politically easier than doing the reverse, but they have at times increased the tax rate when assessed property values have not risen enough to bring in the funds needed for the desired budget.
I think this is well said. The other dimension is public schools since US school funding comes from property taxes so more expensive areas have more funding for their schools, which usually means a higher quality education.