It’s the $600,000 question: Should the St. Helena Unified School District get Howell Mountain and Pope Valley property tax revenue to cover the expense of educating kids from those areas at St. Helena schools?

That question has driven a wedge between the Napa County Office of Education and St. Helena school officials, who believe the county office is pocketing tax revenue that’s intended for the education of Howell Mountain and Pope Valley kids at St. Helena High School.

“Our position is that you’ve been receiving that money that was intended for those kids all along,” Superintendent Allan Gordon told Nemko at last week’s St. Helena School Board meeting. He said the county office owes the St. Helena School District $600,000 for this year, and $6 million to cover the last 17 years.

County office Superintendent Barbara Nemko adamantly denied that the county office owes St. Helena a dime, and provided a legal opinion from an outside attorney to back her up.

“I realize that’s going to make me as popular as a snake at a garden party,” said Nemko. Napa County Auditor/Controller Pam Kindig said that the only ways for St. Helena to get the money it’s seeking would be through legal action or state legislation.

St. Helena school officials claim that the higher proportion of money the county office receives from Howell Mountain and Pope Valley taxpayers represents a high school tuition tax, which should be going to the St. Helena School District to fund the high school education of students from those two K-8 districts.

They say documents from the 1980s confirm that at one time there was a high school tuition tax on the books, but it mysteriously disappeared in 1983 or ’84, while tax allocations remained unchanged.

“When we have money that has been generated from taxpayers for kids’ education, it should go to kids. It should not go to county offices of education, which are bureaucracies,” said Gordon. St. Helena taxpayers have been subsidizing the education of Howell Mountain and Pope Valley kids, “but from this point forward, if there’s growth out there, that has the potential of harming this district,” he said.

Howell Mountain and Pope Valley taxpayers pay 9.2 cents and 11.8 cents on the dollar, respectively, to the county office, compared with 3.7 in St. Helena and 2.2 in Calistoga and the rest of Napa Valley. Last year about 60 students from Howell Mountain and Pope Valley attended St. Helena High School.

However, Nemko and county office boardmembers say St. Helena’s Basic Aid status — which means it’s funded by local property tax revenues, not the state — disqualifies it from receiving any money that’s allocated to the county office.

The legal opinion obtained by the county office states that because the St. Helena School District is Basic Aid, the county office is under no obligation to hand over any money. St. Helena school officials said that opinion sidestepped the key issue of why the county office receives a disproportionately large amount of money from Howell Mountain and Pope Valley taxpayers.

St. Helena school officials claim the current situation results in St. Helena taxpayers footing the bill for the education of students from outside the district, while Howell Mountain and Pope Valley parents lack representation on the St. Helena School Board.

St. Helena’s Basic Aid status has made it one of the wealthiest districts in the state. Nemko suggested last week that it didn’t make sense for St. Helena officials to complain about fairness when the St. Helena School District is so much richer than the other districts in the county.

St. Helena officials bristled at that suggestion, with Trustee Cindy Warren commenting that Nemko was trying to cast St. Helena officials as “greedy Upvalley pigs.”

Trustee Cynthia Jaeger said it’s a matter of justice. “What is just is any parent paying a tax to educate their child, that tax money should educate their child,” she said. “It shouldn’t go off into the sunset where we claim we don’t know what happens to it.”

Nemko said the county office receives a larger proportion of Howell Mountain and Pope Valley tax revenue because it provides additional financial and personnel services to those districts.

After Nemko left, Gordon challenged the county office to prove that the county office is providing $600,000 worth of support for those districts, which, unlike the county’s other districts, lack full-time business officials.

Gordon said the school district is continuing its investigation of the issue, and will report back at future board meetings.