Schools Breathe a Sigh of Relief After Sales Tax Boost is Approved (KS)

May 14, 2010

The 1-cent Kansas sales tax increase won’t solve all the budget woes ahead for area school districts, but administrators hope the Legislature’s action means further cuts won’t be necessary.

Olathe’s school superintendent, Pat All, breathed a sigh of relief when lawmakers plugged a $312 million state budget hole Tuesday with a 1-cent increase in the state sales tax.

She won’t have to recommend involuntary layoffs to the Board of Education.

“It protects jobs,” All said. “I’m relieved we don’t have to make further reductions that chip away at the quality and excellence of our schools.”

Her reaction was typical of educators and school board members in the four largest school districts in Johnson and Wyandotte counties. They are going ahead with more t han $40 million in budget cuts for the 2010-11 school year being proposed prior to the end of the legislative session.

They’re just glad they don’t have to cut any more from next year’s budgets.

School board members in Kansas City, Kan., worried that they might have to cut middle and high school activities ranging from music to sports.

“We can take any conversation off the table about student athletics (and music),” said Kansas City, Kan., School District spokesman David A. Smith.

Still the news is somewhat bittersweet in the district, which has planned for $14.6 million in cuts. It comes after the board saw revenue drop by $21.4 million this year.

“It’s the best we could have hoped for, given the economy,” Smith said. “It’s still grim, but you know we have to make it work, and we will.”

While the district is crossing off its “worst-case scenario” list, the school board still must implement many other deep cuts.

“We will probably continue to do some of the things on that list, but we certainly will not have to go to the final extreme,” Smith said.

Larry Winn III, president of the Shawnee Mission school board, said officials had hoped lawmakers would grant districts greater authority to raise more money from local sources. A bill to do that was considered but eventually failed in both the House and Senate just before lawmakers adjourned.

In budget meetings earlier this year, Shawnee Mission officials told patrons that an increase in the sales tax wouldn’t provide additional revenue for Shawnee Mission because the state aid formula provides a greater share to districts with high levels of poverty, such as Kansas City, Kan., Topeka and Wichita.

Winn echoed that sentiment.

“We’re just exporting that money to other parts of the state,” he said of the increased sales tax revenue. About 25 percent of the sales tax collected in Kansas comes from Johnson County.

Tom Trigg, Blue Valley’s superintendent, said the sales tax increase doesn’t solve his budget problems either, and officials there are prepared to proceed with a $6 million reduction in next year’s budget and $3.6 million on the table if lawmakers had cut school funding. The district has already cut almost $5 million from this year’s spending plan.

He said the bill allowing more school dollars from local taxpayers would have generated an addition $3 million.

“It would have been $12 million for Johnson County,” he said. “That would have been a very positive addition.”

Unlike Johnson County districts, Kansas City, Kan., officials were relieved the state did not move forward with a plan that would allow individual districts to contribute more local funding without providing any state equalization for the poorest school districts in the state.

“We would end up getting less state money,” Smith about the proposal.