photo by: Journal-World

The Lawrence school district offices, 110 McDonald Drive.

School closures, staff cuts and new state funding are expected to put millions of extra dollars at the Lawrence school district’s disposal for 2023-24, but administrators also want to raise the district’s property tax rate slightly, and the school board could soon take a first step toward doing that.

At its meeting on Monday, the board is expected to set the maximum size of the budget and mill levy for 2023-24. Once the board has voted on this, the budget can get smaller, but it can’t grow beyond the maximum the board sets. The proposed budget would increase the mill levy by just over a mill, from 51.070 to 52.229, and would include a maximum spending authority of $193.09 million, up from $159.50 million in 2022-23.

That would be a change in direction from last year’s budget process, when the district lowered its property tax rate by about a mill.

It would also coincide with several million dollars worth of staffing cuts and other reductions that the district has made, as well as an increase in K-12 funding from the state.

As the Journal-World previously reported, the district is expecting to get $4 million more in K-12 education funding from the state than it did last year. And Cynde Frick, the district’s executive director of finance, told the school board in June that the district expected to save $3.81 million from recent budget-cutting measures, including $3.12 million from the reduction of 48 secondary teaching positions and $693,000 from closing Pinckney and Broken Arrow elementary schools.

Together, those things add up to $7.813 million more in funding than the district had in 2022-23, as the Journal-World reported.

District spokesperson Julie Boyle told the Journal-World this past week that it’s “good for us to have more state aid,” and that the recent budget reductions “put us on a better path to financial sustainability and health.” She said the extra money allowed the district to increase teacher and staff wages and cover “some of those operational increases we’ve been seeing in the aftermath of the pandemic” — the rising costs of things like food, utilities and insurance.

But she said it can still be tough to accurately forecast all of the district’s needs and expenditures, and that the maximum spending level in the budget “is set high to give us the flexibility to spend what we need to spend.”

“It’s a little challenging predicting the future,” Boyle said.

Part of the challenge comes from projecting the district’s enrollment — not just next year but several years down the road. As the Journal-World previously reported, consultants hired by the district predicted last year that enrollment would decline by about 300 students by 2027-28, and it’s not yet clear whether the Panasonic battery plant being built in nearby De Soto will draw more families with school-age children to the district. For the near term, 2023-24 enrollment figures won’t be known until after the state-mandated headcount this fall.

“In October, we have an even better picture,” Boyle said.

On Monday, the board is also expected to set a date for its public hearing on the budget, and it’s also required by state law to schedule a hearing if it decides to exceed the “revenue-neutral rate” — the tax rate at which it would collect the same amount of revenue as it did last year. Both of those hearings are expected to be scheduled for the board meeting on Sept. 11.

According to the agenda, the board is also scheduled to consider:

• A request for tax incentives for First Management Inc., which is seeking to redevelop the former Borders building on New Hampshire Street. The incentives request has already received approval from the Lawrence City Commission, and the Douglas County Commission will also be considering it this coming week.

• An agreement with several law firms “to investigate and if appropriate initiate litigation” against social media companies that allegedly engaged in “designing and promoting products to attract and addict children.”

The school board meets at 6 p.m. Monday at district offices, 110 McDonald Drive.

Note: This article was updated to reflect the Lawrence school district’s maximum spending authority ($193.09) million, for its proposed 2023-24 budget.