School district may increase property taxes to offset expected state funding cuts

Lawrence school district officials pointed toward increasing property taxes during its biweekly meeting Monday in order to offset an expected $1.6 million reduction in state aid.

While the Legislature continues to work on the state budget, district officials briefed school board members on what kind of financial situation it soon expects to be in. A new block grant system of funding, signed into law last month by Gov. Sam Brownback, is assumed to result in a $1.6 million hit to the Lawrence district.

At one point during Monday’s meeting, Superintendent Rick Doll turned to the board members and said, “You can be assured that we’re not planning to ask you to cut $2 million more out of the budget, so we need to start thinking about the impact that’s going to have on the mill rate.”

The loss in state aid would come out of Lawrence’s local option and capital outlay budgets. Kathy Johnson, the district’s director of finance, and Kyle Hayden, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning, said the district’s only resort to recoup $1.6 million, as is currently expected, would be a 2-mill increase in property taxes.

A mill is $1 in taxes for every $1,000 in assessed valuation. Johnson said she expects to receive the final state funding information by late June.

The Lawrence district is expected to receive an increase of several million dollars in total state aid for the next two school years (the block grant system is expected to only be in place for two years while the state drafts a new funding formula), but much of that money is required to go toward the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System and its virtual school.

The block grant system also does not compensate schools for increased enrollment, nor are the grant amounts tied to how many district students have special needs, such as those that are considered at-risk or English-as-a-second-language learners.

Several members of the Lawrence school board repeatedly exhaled in frustration Monday night.

“I’m already getting complaints about class sizes,” board member Kristie Adair said. “I can’t imagine if we decided to start cutting $2 million and increasing classes.”

Referring to the block grant system’s lack of consideration for enrollment, board member Randy Masten said, “Heaven forbid they do their job rather than find an easy way out.”

Also Monday, the board received an update on the implementation of new sexual education standards that it adopted in May 2013.

Sarah Oatsvall, the district’s assistant director of teaching and learning, said the National Human Sexuality Standards went live across the entire district for the first time this year and that it’s “been a real success.”

Prior to the new standards, the district subscribed to the Kansas State Department of Education’s rubric and provided instruction to students in kindergarten through fifth grade, as well as ninth grade. The national standards add more instruction in sixth and eighth grades.

Oatsvall said that less than 1 percent of eighth-graders and less than 2 percent of ninth-graders have opted out of the classes so far this year.

“We are the first district in the state to (implement the national standards) and it has gone very well,” Oatsvall said.