Lawrence school Superintendent Rick Doll on Monday said the district may make its own budget cuts in addition to raising local property taxes in reaction to looming funding cuts from the state government.

Doll clarified remarks he made during a school board meeting two weeks ago in which, during a budget discussion, he turned to 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.”

At Monday’s board meeting, Doll said he wanted to make it clear the district is also considering cuts, not just additional property taxes. He said the district’s finance advisory committee was in the process of identifying and recommending “hundreds of thousands of dollars in cuts” to the district’s budget.

A new block grant system of funding, signed into law in March by Gov. Sam Brownback, has been estimated to result in a $1.6 million hit to the Lawrence district. That figure is not final, though, with the Legislature still working on the state budget.

The funding loss 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, have said the district’s only resort to recovering any lost funding would be increasing property taxes.

Construction contracts

Also Monday, the board approved construction contracts for several schools, as part of the $92.5 million bond issue that benefitted all the schools through various renovation and construction projects.

The board approved a guaranteed maximum price of $3.5 million and $1.96 million for construction work at Quail Run and Woodlawn elementary schools, respectively. However, more than $930,000 of the Quail Run project will come out of the district’s capital outlay fund.

The board also approved a guaranteed maximum price of $1.6 million for the first part of construction at Lawrence High School. That amount includes $660,000 in capital outlay funds. The district eventually plans to spend a total of $3.3 million at LHS.

New administrator

In other business Monday, the school district announced that Annette Kenoly, a Topeka elementary school principal, will join Liberty Memorial Central Middle School as an assistant principal next year.

Kenoly will replace Jeremy McDonnell, who will move to the Shawnee Mission school district next year for an elementary principal position.

“The opportunity to work in a diverse middle school environment where I can share my talents and passion for education is what both attracted me to the position and what I am most looking forward to,” Kenoly said in a statement.

Kenoly is in her third year as principal of Ross Elementary School in Topeka. Previously, she was the assistant principal of French Middle School, also in Topeka.

In the past she also served as a middle school literacy coach, a classroom teacher and elementary substitute teacher for 10 years. She has a bachelor’s degree from Washburn University and a master’s from Baker University.