Gov. Mark Parkinson said Thursday that once legislators plug the holes in the current year’s budget, there’s not a lot for them to do until April.

That’s when the state’s budget experts will deliver an updated estimate of how much revenue they expect the state to collect in the fiscal year that starts July 1.

If legislators have a little time on their hands, we have a suggestion.

Perhaps state legislators could go back to their home districts and spend at least a day with their local school superintendents, looking at the school district budgets and suggesting how they could be cut by the amount that will be necessary if the state doesn’t find a way to raise some additional revenue.

The magnitude of the challenge is apparent as Lawrence school board members and administrators look for between $4 million and $5 million in cuts for the next school year. As reported in Thursday’s Journal-World, if school board members accepted every cut listed by administrators except reducing the number of teachers and closing schools, they still would be only halfway to their goal.

Are districts trying to maintain reserve funds that are too high? Many legislators may think so, but those reserves come in handy, for instance, to meet the district payroll when the state can’t distribute funds to the districts on time. Can administrative costs be reduced? Again, many legislators probably think so, but the non-teacher cuts put forth in Lawrence already include about $662,000 in cuts to administration.

Timing is no small part of the equation. The inability of legislators to make serious decisions about the budget until after the April revenue estimates puts school districts in a bind. The Lawrence school board has set its own deadline of March to designate budget reductions for the coming year. Budget notes given to board members last week remind them that the district has a May 1 deadline to notify certified and licensed staff whether their contracts will be renewed. District patrons must be notified of any boundary changes by May. If cuts needed to balance next year’s budget are as drastic as many expect, the board can’t wait until state funding figures are set to make those decisions.

Legislators need to really understand the situation school districts are facing. If they have ideas about how to meet the financial challenge, district superintendents would like to hear them. If legislators can find a way to make it work, great. If not, it might send them back to Topeka with a new appreciation for how the decisions they make affect the public schools in their community and the prospects for a well-educated workforce to fuel the state’s future.