City and county commissioners are weighing whether to help the Lawrence school district as it struggles under the weight of $4.7 million in budget cuts that would weaken or destroy programs most agree are praiseworthy.

On the other hand, the city and county have budget problems of their own. And some commissioners don’t want to let the state, which is responsible for public education in Kansas, off the hook.

Underneath all the discussion is the possibility the local governments would raise property taxes to help schools.

“It’s an apple pie and motherhood kind of question,” Douglas County Commissioner Bob Johnson said. “And it’s a choice you don’t want to have to make.”

It’s a choice that commissioners will have to confront, however, and soon a “budget summit” of the city, county and school boards will convene May 29.

Lawrence Supt. Randy Weseman doesn’t play around with the question: He wants the money if he can get it.

“That would be welcome news to us,” he said. “We have no other resources at this point.”

	The budget summit of the city, county and school boards will start at 9 a.m. May 29 in the school board offices at 110 McDonald Drive.

Nobody is talking about rehiring the 65 teachers the school district is laying off. But there’s growing discussion that the city and county should shoulder some of the school district’s expenses for programs that aren’t directly related to education, like school nurses or the much-praised WRAP program (Working to Recognize Alternative Possibilities), which puts mental-health professionals in public schools to help students manage during trying times.

“Keeping kids healthy and trying to defuse trouble before it occurs, both of those things contribute to a better educational experience,” City Commissioner David Dunfield said. “But both of those things aren’t necessarily a direct matter of classroom teaching.”

Disagreement

City Commissioner Mike Rundle is often a Dunfield ally on critical issues. They disagree on this one.

“We shouldn’t institutionalize the bad judgment of the Legislature; it’s something we shouldn’t have to compensate for at the local level,” Rundle said. “The city and county are not supposed to fund the educational system, as far as I know.”

County officials say it’s probable that if they help Lawrence, though, they’ll soon be called on to help pay for school district costs in Eudora, Baldwin and Lecompton.

“It just opens up a can of worms,” County Commissioner Jere McElhaney said.

But Mayor Sue Hack, a junior high teacher who is retiring from education, supports city assistance to schools. Helping students is a good investment, she said.

“If we can help kids become income- and sales-tax producers, rather than consumers, we’ve done a good thing as a community,” she said. “I think how we handle the issue of our children’s education should be a communitywide concern, not just schools.”

Wiggle room

Most of the commissioners say they want to keep taxes flat. But there may be some wiggle room in that equation. The school district’s 55-mill share of the 110.7-mill property tax rate in Lawrence will certainly decline because of state cuts which some commissioners say gives the city and county the opportunity to raise their rates to support schools without climbing above that 110-mill benchmark.

A mill is $1 of tax for every $1,000 of a property’s assessed valuation.

“What we’re talking about doing, essentially, is trading funding sources from taxes we pay to the state to taxes we pay to the city,” Dunfield said. “It all comes out of taxpayers’ pockets eventually.”

“It’s a tough call,” County Commissioner Charles Jones said. “You don’t want to let the legislature off the hook, but the city and county can raise their mill levies and the school district cannot.”

McElhaney is skeptical.

“They have their own budget, they have their own priorities, they have their own goals,” he said. “I don’t think they’re going to try to help the county with our budget.”