photo by: Journal-World

The Lawrence school district offices, 110 McDonald Drive.

A dispute over the cost of natural gas during a major freeze in Kansas last winter between the Lawrence school district and its energy provider has been resolved through a legal settlement.

However, the details of that settlement have not been publicly released, and it’s unclear how much public funding is being spent on the district’s gas bill for that time period. Additionally, as part of the settlement the district is switching natural gas providers, which will lead to a rise in the district’s annual gas spending.

On Monday, the Lawrence school board approved the confidential settlement agreement with Constellation NewEnergy’s gas division. According to the meeting agenda, the district accepted a negotiated discount to the gas bill it had received that covered the time between Feb. 12 and Feb. 19.

The district secured the settlement agreement after it joined other state school districts in a lawsuit that the Kansas Association of School Boards brought against energy companies. The lawsuit challenged unexpectedly high energy bills that were associated with a deep freeze throughout a significant part of the country in February.

As the Journal-World previously reported, the district received a bill of $498,000 for its February utility costs, which is a more than 800% increase over its normal cost of $54,000. According to the board’s meeting agenda, a little more than $477,000 of that charge was in dispute.

How the settlement affected that bill is unclear. District spokeswoman Julie Boyle told the Journal-World that the settlement agreement was confidential and the district could not release the details. She also did not respond to the Journal-World’s question about why the district entered an agreement that made the spending of public funding confidential.

But she said the agreement meant that “the issue was resolved to all parties’ satisfaction.”

Austin Harris of KASB told the Journal-World the organization did not directly negotiate the settlement for the Lawrence school district and does not have the details of its agreement.

KASB negotiated agreements for a group of 178 school districts that receive services through KASB’s “energy pool.” In that settlement, the schools received a 50% discount, Harris said. But the Lawrence school district receives services through a different energy company, so KASB connected the district to attorney James P. Zakoura, who negotiated its settlement, he said.

Zakoura did not return the Journal-World’s request for information about the agreement on Wednesday. The Journal-World also filed a request for a copy of the agreement through the Kansas Open Records Act. Boyle said the district forwarded the request to the energy company “per the settlement agreement.”

The district will also no longer use Constellation as its gas provider. On Monday, the board also approved a purchase agreement with WoodRiver Energy LLC to serve as the district’s natural gas provider for the next five years, beginning Wednesday. The company was recommended by KASB, and the new agreement is expected to increase the district’s annual natural gas spending by $300,000, according to the board’s meeting agenda.

Before the settlement with Constellation was agreed upon, the district needed to reflect the expense of the original bill in its 2020-21 budget, which ended in July, while the charge was still in dispute. Finance Director Kathy Johnson said at the time the dollars had been set aside in the budget’s contingency reserve fund until there was a resolution to the challenge.

If the challenge was successful and the dollars did not need to be spent, Johnson told the Journal-World at the time the funding was set aside that the dollars would be “freed up” within the contingency reserve fund to be used for other funding priorities in the future.