Print edition: 
An anti-tax group has been peddling the claim that school districts can afford funding cuts because they have cash reserves at the end of their budget year. Now House Speaker Mike O’Neal, R-Hutchinson, is blaming schools for raising taxes and arguing that the state shouldn’t increase school funding until districts spend down their reserves.
Seriously? Do O’Neal and others think school districts are laying off teachers and raising taxes for the heck of it?
The Hutchinson News recently surveyed Kansas superintendents and found that the majority of respondents cut jobs and increased local property taxes in response to state funding cuts.
O’Neal’s response was to blame the districts for not transferring cash reserves from some operating funds back to their general funds to offset cuts in state aid.
“It’s difficult to justify increases in local property taxes to tap additional funds when all but a very few districts had/have the reserves to accommodate their spending decisions,” O’Neal said in an e-mail to the Hutchinson News.
O’Neal also said he worked directly with state Education Commissioner Diane DeBacker and Assistant Commissioner Dale Dennis to identify carryover balances that could be used for other purposes, which the Legislature authorized last session.
“They agree that these funds should be accessed first before additional funding is considered,” O’Neal wrote.
However, DeBacker didn’t confirm that she and Dennis agreed that districts needed to spend down this money. “Our discussion was about which funds could legally be transferred to the general fund to make up for the reductions,” she said in an e-mail to The Eagle editorial board.
The Kansas Policy Institute, a free-market think tank, has been trying to portray districts as sitting on piles of available cash. In a recent letter to the editor on these pages, institute president and CEO Dave Trabert noted that total operating carryover balances in the state’s school districts have been increasing.
District officials have explained until they are blue in the face that having fund balances on June 30 doesn’t necessarily mean this money is available to spend. Most of the reserves are needed to pay for planned expenses.
For example, special-education funds need large balances at the end of the fiscal year in order to have enough money to pay salaries and other expenses from July 1 until districts receive their next aid payment in October.
As is the case with any well-run business, school districts also need some operating reserves to help with cash flow and unplanned expenses. This is particularly important when the state has the habit of being late with its aid payments and when it cuts funding midway through the school year.
If districts have learned anything in recent years, it’s that they can’t rely on the state to honor its funding promises. So districts had better be prepared.
The irony is that just a couple of years ago, lawmakers lectured school districts about needing to operate more like businesses and have more cash reserves. Now lawmakers are trying to use those same reserves as an excuse.
