The Lawrence school board approved a proposal to cut and reallocate more than $1.2 million in the district’s budget as a result of an expected decrease in state aid, said Lawrence schools Superintendent Rick Doll.

The proposal, which is for the upcoming fiscal year beginning July 1, is a “direct result” of Senate Bill 7, Doll said. The bill, signed into law by Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback in March, repealed the Kansas school finance formula that had been in place since 1993 and replaced it with a block grant system.

In effect, the bill decreases the amount of funding the district receives from the state over the next two years, Doll said.

The board, which met Tuesday, was able to avoid layoffs and program cuts in its proposal, Doll said. The bulk of the cuts can be made up by opting not to fill open positions made vacant by attrition.

Duties assigned to the positions that will not be filled will have to be redistributed among remaining staff members, Doll said.

“It’s not like it’s painless; there’s pain involved,” he said. “Somebody else is going to have to do their job. But it’s a little less painful in that we don’t have to walk up to someone and say, ‘You don’t have a job anymore.'”

Despite the cuts and vacant positions that will remain open, Doll said class sizes should not increase.

Teachers may have to be moved between schools to accommodate the fluid numbers of student enrollment, Doll said. But in all, the student-to-teacher ratio should stay the same.

Rep. Dennis Highberger, D-Lawrence, said the district’s budget cuts are the “inevitable result” of the state’s reduction in education funding. Those results will be worse in the future, he said.

“Tax burdens will be shifted to local governments, class sizes will increase, and already hard-working staff will be asked to take on even more responsibilities,” he said.

The proposal is by no means final, said Shannon Kimball, president of the school board. Because the Kansas Legislature has not yet passed a budget, the board is not yet sure just how much funding to expect this year.

“At this point we’re just waiting for the Legislature to pass a budget and appropriate the money for the block grant bill,” Kimball said. “Until they do that, we’re still kind of waiting in limbo.”

Both Doll and Kimball said if the Legislature doesn’t fully fund the block grants the district may have to make more cuts.

“If they fund the block grants as it’s presently proposed, we think these budget reallocations will be sufficient to get us through the next year,” Doll said.

“We’re crossing our fingers that the Legislature does what they’ve promised so we don’t have to go any further with our budget cuts,” Kimball said.

Over the coming months the budget proposal will be scrutinized further, Doll said. The final budget will be approved in August.