Within the next day or so, voters in the Lawrence school district will find a ballot in their mailboxes asking whether the district should be allowed to maintain its local option budget (LOB) at the current level.

It’s hard to know what will happen to state funding for K-12 education in the next year, but approving the current level of local funding for the district is a prudent way to support the Lawrence district as it ventures into uncertain financial territory.

The events that caused the district to seek this vote are a little complicated, but the bottom line is that a “yes” vote on the LOB issue will maintain — not increase — the local mill levy or the amount of property tax paid by district patrons. A “no” vote will decrease the taxes on a $100,000 home by about $14 a year, but it also will mean the Lawrence district will have $1.4 million less to work with next year.

The district lost about $1.8 million from its general fund last year after the Kansas Legislature changed the funding formula to exclude students enrolled in virtual schools. The removal of Lawrence Virtual School students from the district’s enrollment, along with some other changes resulted in a loss of $1.8 million in state aid to the Lawrence district.

At that time, the district was allowed to levy an LOB equal to no more than 31 percent of its general fund budget. To help districts make up for the loss of state funding, the Legislature allowed them to raise their LOB levies to 33 percent, which the Lawrence district did. The higher levy allowed the district to recoup about $1.4 million of what it had lost. In order to continue the LOB at 33 percent beyond this year, however, the district must conduct a mail election seeking patrons’ permission.

That’s why your ballot is in the mail.

As noted above, the situation with state school funding is extremely uncertain. The state is facing a revenue shortfall and a court decision (which the state already has appealed) saying that the state’s level of school funding is inadequate. Both the governor and some state legislators have expressed a desire to revisit and perhaps alter the school finance formula used to distribute funding to districts throughout the state.

It’s difficult to predict what will happen to school funding in Kansas in the long term, but, in the short term, approving the LOB request will help sustain the Lawrence district budget without raising local taxes. It’s a reasonable step that voters should support.