Lawrence school district budget includes teacher cuts, deficit spending and lower taxes

Lawrence Public Schools (Shutterstock photo)

Next school year, Lawrence Public Schools will be operating with 17 fewer full-time classroom teachers. Together, those teaching positions will save the district about $987,000 — cuts that board members said were necessary because of inadequate state funding.

“This is a direct impact from the state’s action, or inaction, in making sure that they provided us with additional funds, particularly in Lawrence because we’re a growing district,” school board Vice President Shannon Kimball told the board, noting the district’s enrollment has been rising the past several years. “I just want to point that out, because it’s not something we’re doing because we want to.”

Because state aid for the previous and upcoming school years was not calculated on a per-pupil basis, school districts do not automatically receive additional funds when enrollment increases. The staffing cuts make up the bulk of reductions made to the district’s budget, which was proposed as part of the board’s meeting on Monday.

The 17 teacher positions that will not be filled consist of eight elementary, four middle school and five high school teachers. One districtwide nursing position was also not filled. All but three of those staff reductions were positions that were not filled after being vacated by either resignations or retirements.

The three staff members directly cut — their contracts were not renewed at the end of the school year — were at the high school level. Superintendent Kyle Hayden told the board that district administration worked with the high school principals over the course of the year to find “efficiencies” in the high school curriculum in order to save money.

“There were proposals that allowed us to combine some classes, rename some classes and essentially consolidate and gain some efficiencies, where we felt like we could reduce three teaching positions and still deliver the same curriculum,” Hayden said.

The staff reductions are part of a published budget report that outlines the district’s funding, expected expenditures and the estimated property tax mill levy needed for the upcoming school year. Once the budget is published, district officials may adjust the budget downward but not upward.

Deficit spending

The budget also includes a significant amount of deficit spending, which is being covered by the district’s cash reserves. The budget includes $2.75 million of funds from the district’s contingency reserve, a fund that functions as the district’s savings or emergency fund. Kathy Johnson, the district’s director of finance, said that hopefully the district would not end up using of all of that.

“We’re getting to where it’s a little scary to get it too much lower, just because we need that ability to navigate cash flow,” Johnson said, noting that the reserve is at about $5.4 million.

Kimball noted that the spending down of cash balances was an action taken in response to criticism from some state legislators that districts had an abundance of reserves, but that it was time to reevaluate.

“They’ve been fussing at school districts in general for holding cash balances that they deem to be too high, that we’re sitting on money,” Kimball said. “So we’ve spent it down. As I said to somebody today, we’ve kind of reached that point where we’ve spent it. We’ve done what they directed us to do and they need to take that into consideration when setting a funding formula that provides for the actual cost of educating our students.”

State lawmakers are expected to come up with a new funding formula in the next year to replace the long-standing per-pupil formula that was repealed last March.

Property tax decrease

The budget also includes relief for local property owners: a 3.165 mill decrease in the district’s property tax rate.

The majority of that reduction was made possible after recent state funding changes essentially walked back reductions to equalization aid made by state lawmakers last year. The $1.5 million increase for the district allows it to generate the same amount of money in its local option budget but with less local tax dollars.

Taxes are levied on 11.5 percent of a home’s assessed property value, and 1 mill is equivalent to $1 for every $1,000 of that value. Under the school district’s current tax rate, the owner of a home valued at $160,000 pays about $1,047 in property tax per year toward the district. The 3.165 mill decrease amounts to about $58 less per year for that owner.

Though the property tax reduction was welcome news, Superintendent Hayden recognized that more changes needed to be made in the upcoming year to improve the district’s outlook.

“The good news is the mill levy went down,” Hayden said. “The bad news is we are deficit spending and we are dipping into our reserves at a pretty high rate, and we’re going to have to develop a pretty good plan to address that.”

The budget will not be final until the board votes to approve it. The board’s budget hearing and approval will take place Aug. 8 at district offices, 110 McDonald Drive.