photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

The Lawrence school district offices building, located at 110 McDonald Dr., is pictured in May 2025.

Lawrence school board members are set to begin discussions next week on the 2025-2026 school year budget, and they’ll consider setting a maximum property tax rate slightly higher than the previous year’s rate.

While little information on the budget was included in the school board’s meeting agenda for Monday, the district has notified the Douglas County Clerk that the mill levy – also known as the property tax rate – will not exceed 52.492 mills. One mill is equal to one dollar of property taxes for every $1,000 of a property’s assessed value.

School board members are scheduled to vote on the maximum mill levy on Monday along with receiving a report on changes to this year’s budget. Once the board sets its maximum mill levy, it is still able to lower the rate, but it can no longer increase it.

According to presentation documents provided to the Journal-World on Friday, the school district’s final mill levy may not actually be quite as high as the maximum rate. The district is actually proposing a final mill levy that’s lower than the maximum, at 52.333 mills, a 0.081 increase over the current rate of 52.252 mills. For a homeowner with a $300,000 property, this would mean an estimated $2.79 increase in property taxes.

The presentation said “a one-tenth of a mill increase will offset the reduction in (Local Option Budget) state aid.”

If the district were to increase the mill levy all the way to the proposed maximum of 52.492 mills, that would be a 0.24-mill increase, and that would mean an estimated $8.28 increase in property taxes for a homeowner with a $300,000 property.

The school district submitted four separate mill levy amounts to the county clerk’s office: one each for its general operating fund, debt service fund, capital outlay fund, and various other levies. The Journal-World combined these amounts and compared the total to the current budget’s mill levy.

Superintendent Jeanice Swift told the Journal-World via email that this year, the district faces a number of challenges, including wages and special education funding, as it crafts its budget.

“Among our challenges is the continued need to ensure adequate funding for public education, particularly around full funding for special education, a concerning gap that all districts face,” Swift said in the email. “Also, our work to achieve and sustain more competitive compensation for educators and employees, despite lagging funding, and also addressing the increasing costs of health insurance.”

At the end of July, the district along with other taxing entities in the county were required to submit their maximum mill levy amounts to the county clerk’s office in order to comply with a state law related to public budget hearings for their revenue-neutral rates. The district has notified the office that it will be exceeding the revenue-neutral rate, which is the property tax rate that would be required to raise the same amount of property tax revenue as the previous year. That value for the school district would be 49.174 mills, once all of the four mill levy values are added together.

The public hearings on exceeding the revenue-neutral rate and on the adoption of the budget itself are scheduled for Sept. 8.

In other business at Monday’s meeting, school board members will:

• Consider approving an agreement with Aspire 2 Play LLC for repairs to the playground surface at Hillcrest Elementary School in the amount of $24,398. According to the agenda, the “poured-in-place unitary surface” is deteriorating and over time has pulled away from the edges, causing the surface to shrink. The project will make repairs and apply a DuraPlay maintenance coating to the entire surface.

• Consider approving a contract in the estimated amount of $50,000 for special education services with Cornerstones of Care Services.

The board will meet at 6 p.m. on Monday at the district offices, 110 McDonald Drive. The meeting will also be available via the school district’s YouTube channel. Residents who want to share comments with the board may sign up in advance by emailing PublicComment@usd497.org by noon Monday and may participate in person or via Webex video/phone conferencing.