The Kansas City, Kansas, school board, meeting today at 5 p.m., will consider a bond refinance and increasing the local option budget authority to 33 percent.
Currently the local option budget (LOB) is at 30 percent.
District officials explained at earlier meetings that by refinancing the bonds they could save about $4 million in interest costs.
Then the district proposes to move 1.16 mills from the bond and interest fund into the LOB fund for additional operating expenses.
That would increase the local option budget to 33 percent, but according to the district officials, it would not increase the dollar amount of taxes that are paid by local taxpayers.
While the school district has not yet approved its budget for the next school year, it has held some discussions on it. Some of its decisions were pending budget bills in the Kansas Legislature, which wrapped up its session over the weekend.
The school board meeting space is not yet open for the public to attend, because of COVID-19 precautions. The public may watch the meeting on YouTube at https://youtu.be/a3x6wQyeKls.
Several other items are on the school board’s agenda for Tuesday night. The agenda is at https://go.boarddocs.com/ks/kckps/Board.nsf/vpublic?open#’.