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“Can you believe what’s happening in Kansas City School District?”

As an education reporter, I’ve been getting this question a lot lately.

That’s understandable. Kansas City School District faces a $50 million deficit and is on track to close to 30 buildings.

But I’ve started asking questions about that district with a question of my own.

“Have you seen what’s happening in the suburban and rural districts?” I ask.

While Kansas City’s schools provide good visuals and sensational stories for local TV news broadcasts, I’ve tracked a much more interesting, scary and potentially widespread phenomenon rippling its way through the outer ring of communities, including Liberty, Kearney and Smithville.

What it amounts to is fiscal climate change.

Talk to any local school district superintendent or board of education member, and at some point the conversation comes around to budget cuts. It’s ubiquitous and not likely to change any time soon.

And our school districts will either adapt to this new reality or face issues that have become top-of-the-broadcast news in the urban core.

For about 15 years starting in the 1990s, our communities experienced an almost unprecedented period of prosperity. Businesses grew, home and commercial property values rose, household incomes expanded.

The result was a glut for local governments and public services like schools as property and sales tax revenues rose along with consumer spending and the housing market. Officials grew accustomed to this and started planning for constant growth.

Well, the party’s over.

Locally, assessed property valuations have mimicked the national recession. Values in Clay County actually declined in 2007 and 2009 after increasing every year since 1993.

That’s bad news for school districts, which receive about 75 percent of their funding from local property taxes.

And though Gov. Jay Nixon has tried to protect schools, it looks like the state is going to fall 2 percent short of what it promised local educators for the 2010-2011 school year.

That may not seem like a lot, but a 2 percent cut means $232,616 for Kearney R-I School District, $150,205 less for Smithville R-II School District and $845,109 for Liberty Public Schools.

That’s money that those school districts can scarcely afford to lose from their operational budgets. It’s the equivalent of about 22 additional teachers for the three communities.

Bear in mind that the state was only able to fully fund local school districts this year because the federal government printed more money and handed it out with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. That fiscal crutch won’t be around next year.

And all of this is under the ticking clock and heavy hand of No Child Left Behind.,

You can see why people like superintendents rub their foreheads a lot.

The sky may not be falling, but the air is getting a lot harder to breath. And the only way our communities are going to come out of this in one piece is if everyone gets comfortable with fewer resources.

No one likes the fact that a club gets cut or students have fewer field trips or the computers aren’t the latest model. These are painful but necessary decisions.

One of the reasons Kansas City School District ended up in the state it did was because its leaders refused to adapt to shrinking enrollment. Buildings and staff were kept years after they should have been closed or let go.

Nobody wanted to make the hard choices. And now the hard choices are going to be a lot more painful.

Our communities have to adjust. Welcome to the new normal.

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