ShawneeDispatch.com

De Soto School Board members listened to administrators make their pitch for a mill levy increase for the 2007-2008 school year but deferred a decision on the request until later this month.

The 3.597-mill levy increase proposed by De Soto Superintendent Sharon Zoellner and district financial director Ken Larson would be largely driven by the Kansas Board of Tax Appeal's recent approval of the district's request for added mill levy approval with the opening of two new schools.

In February, Zoellner and Larson asked the board to authorize a request to the tax appeals board for $1.76 million in added mill levy authority to make up for the shortfall in district revenue stemming from the need to staff and operate the new Horizon Elementary School and Mill Creek Middle School, which are to open in August.

The added authority would be granted for five years and would decline to 75 percent of the new authority in the third year, 50 percent in the fourth year and 25 percent in the final year.

At the April 9 meeting, Larson and Zoellner provided updated figures on the district's needs for the coming year. The district would be in line for additional revenue with an estimated enrollment growth of 300 students and by making use of some of the added local option budget authority granted by the Legislature. But increased cost, largely attributed to added salaries, would leave the district $293,000 short of what it needs to cover expenses, they said.

And Zoellner said that figure did not include teacher salary increases that would be negotiated later this spring.

Larson and Zoellner told the board Monday that the entire extra taxing authority the tax appeals board granted (which grew to $1.85 million with this year's valuation numbers) wasn't needed. Instead, they recommended making use of $1.27 million of the granted authority in next year's budget, which Larson estimated to equal 3.334 mills.

The administrators' early budget scenario also showed the district using 1.781 mills of added authority in the local option budget and a decrease in bond and interest mill levy of .865 mills. Overall, the early 2007-2008 budget scenario estimated a 73.912 mill levy, up from 69.693 in 2006-2007.

That would equal about $3 a month per $100,000 of assessed valuation on a home, Larson said.

At that mill rate, the money would be available for increases to teachers' salaries and the district's customary practice of offering administrators salary increases equal to what the teachers were given the year before, Zoellner said.

Although the district was able to fill many of the positions in the new schools by transferring teachers from existing schools that will lose enrollment with their opening, the district would be looking to add 42 new teaching positions next year, Zoellner said.

Although a final decision on the request wasn't needed last Monday, it was important the district got direction on the proposed added mill levy authority because this is a critical time in the teacher recruitment process, Zoellner said.