Schools increase local budget cap

Ten percent of the state’s school districts took advantage last school year of a statutory change that allowed them to expand their cap for levying property taxes, and the number of districts doing so may increase in the new fiscal year.

On Tuesday, Topeka Unified School District 501 voters joined the list of districts with expanded local budget authority — assuming the 106-vote approval margin stands following final ballot tallies this coming week.

That makes USD 501 the first large, majority low-income district (as measured by parents’ self-reported earnings) to take this route. Wichita USD 259 and Kansas City, Kan., USD 500 have held off.

David Smith, spokesperson for the Kansas City school district, said administrators there feel the Legislature isn’t fulfilling its duty to fund schools adequately.

“For years, we have been asking the taxpayers of our community to make up for what the legislature … has refused to do,” he wrote in an email, referring to cuts since the recession to certain types of state aid, including aid that targets poorer school districts.

But USD 501 administrators worry the Legislature’s latest cuts to schools’ operating and maintenance aid — and the fear that more reductions could be on the way — might make raising the local tax cap necessary.

“I had people ask me, maybe they should just vote ‘no’ because it’s the state’s responsibility and we should be sending a message to the state,” Topeka board member Nancy Kirk said Thursday. “But I said look, if we don’t pass some flexibility and there are more cuts, do you know where those cuts are coming from? Those are going to be classroom teachers.”

Last spring the Legislature raised the cap on local budgets that schools raise largely through property taxes. Lawmakers raised the maximum by 2 percentage points with a couple of restrictions. Firstly, districts could only use the expanded authority for one year before needing taxpayer approval — as determined by a public vote — to continue.

Secondly, not all districts were eligible for the first year without public votes. (This applied to districts with slightly smaller local budgets, for whom the new law meant a maximum 3-percentage point jump instead of 2-percentage points.)

Twenty-nine of the state’s 286 districts adopted the higher caps, and most of them immediately expanded their budgets by the full 2 percentage points.

These districts range from the four largest in Johnson County — the county with the highest median household earnings in the state according to the U.S. Census Bureau — to the 420-student Skyline USD 438 in Pratt, which at the start of last fiscal year was the single Kansas district with the least cash on hand ($0 in contingency reserves and $128,000 in total cash balances for all funds).

Last month, lawmakers agreed to give Skyline emergency funds, without which superintendent Mike Sanders had said he feared Skyline wouldn’t be able to pay its bills, because his cash-strapped district was struggling to absorb mid-year school funding cuts the Legislature had made in March.

According to Mark Tallman, a lobbyist for the Kansas Association of School Boards, it is likely more districts will have expanded budget authority next school year.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if maybe that number would double,” he said, referring to this year’s tally of 29 districts. “We really don’t know.”

Though public votes must be held by July 1, the Kansas State Department of Education won’t record which districts received expanded authority until superintendents turn in annual budget paperwork in the fall.

In January elections, residents of the four Johnson County districts with higher caps (Blue Valley, Olathe, Shawnee Mission and De Soto) gave approval — by landslide margins — to make the authority permanent. Lawrence voters also answered with a resounding “yes” to a higher cap.

In Shawnee County, just two districts have attempted the same route. Unlike the Johnson County and Lawrence votes, USD 501’s measure passed narrowly. Auburn-Washburn voters rejected the same question by a margin of more than 10 percentage points.

“We lost by over a thousand” votes, superintendent Brenda Dietrich said. “I mean that’s huge.”

It is unclear why Auburn-Washburn residents voted as they did. Voters may have been shying away from the burden of higher property taxes, may have felt the funding was unnecessary, or other factors may have played in.

Dietrich suggested some patrons could be frustrated with the Legislature and possibly its decision to raise sales tax.

The Topeka and Auburn-Washburn elections came as the Legislature wrapped up a record-long session marked by a bitter fight over budget and tax matters.

“We’ve got very politically astute patrons,” Dietrich said. “They’re highly educated.”

The district has made budget reductions for the 2015-16 school year and will spend down cash reserves, but Dietrich expressed concern for the following school year, when USD 437 may ask families to pay certain busing and all-day kindergarten fees to make ends meet.

Rep. Melissa Rooker, a Johnson County Republican whose legislative district covers Shawnee Mission schools, believes what appears to be a trend across Kansas toward boosting local budget caps shows the priorities of voters.

“People really do care about making sure that their schools are top-notch,” Rooker said.

But she said the fact that not all districts will be able to boost funding through local property taxes raises questions of equity, since the Legislature has cut maintenance and operating state aid to schools at the same time.

“Schools are looking for every source of funding that they can find to make up for the loss of state funding,” Rooker said, and if some schools find means and others don’t, “there are kids losing an opportunity there.”