The Lawrence Education Association supports giving the school board more authority to raise its local-option budget.

Lawrence school district voters will decide in an April 1 election whether the district can raise about $680,000 through a projected half-mill property tax increase likely to fund teacher salaries and other requests.

“We plan to work hand-in-hand with the administration and the board to support that,” said Carolyn Klote, LEA lead negotiator for this year’s contract talks.

Some school board members have said the extra money is needed to try to compete with area districts.

Negotiators for the LEA and the board met Thursday evening at district headquarters, 110 McDonald Drive, to discuss issues surrounding contract negotiations in coming months.

Board members have mentioned being able to use the extra LOB funding partly for employee raises and possibly to help fund some form of the WRAP program, which puts Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center clinical social workers in schools. But board members will have a formal discussion about how they would spend the money at their 7 p.m. meeting Monday at district headquarters.

Administrators have said they expect the district to receive a little more than $1 million in unrestricted funds, including for salaries, under the third year of the Legislature’s school funding plan. Even with the election pending, board members are also watching what legislators do as their session proceeds.

“We don’t know how much money we have to talk about, which makes it difficult to talk about salary early on,” said Central Junior High School Principal Frank Harwood, the board’s lead negotiator.

Klote, a special education teacher in one of the district’s therapeutic classrooms at Bert Nash, and Harwood said both negotiating teams also hope to make decisions for the 2008-2009 contract agreement on elementary-teaching planning time and reforming the district’s early retirement system.

Board members have estimated the owner of a $200,000 home would pay about an extra $14 per year if the LOB increase passes.