The Akron Public Schools board is starting to hear how the state budget could affect the district's finances.

But there's caution around those early numbers.

School board president Jason Haas says he's heard varying possibilities in just the past few days, since Gov. Kasich unveiled his own budget plans.

"You know, originally they're telling us that our funding may go up by about 2.9 percent," Haas explains to AkronNewsNow.com, "however, you're looking at other numbers...the increase over a five year period is only about 0.2 percent per year. That comes out to about one percent."

Haas says just wait it out, and see what the state legislature does before relying on funding numbers out of Columbus.

"It's very exciting to the budget processes start," Haas says, "but we know over the next four months it's going to look a lot different than it did in the governor's head when he came up with it."

But the Akron board can't wait long to cut more spending. It's looking ahead to fiscal year 2014.

"We need to eliminate about eight to nine million dollars in spending to have our next fiscal year be balanced," Haas tells AkronNewsNow.com.

And cuts could be more than that, Haas says, if the board decides to make cuts looking at their effect on future fiscal year deficits.

Haas says superintendent David James will work on a plan to deal with the deficit, and that James and the board will work on a final cut plan for the coming fiscal year sometime in the next 60 days.

But Haas again says one thing is clear...the areas that are left to be cut to save money involve people and buildings.

"Personnel costs are about 73 percent of our costs," Haas points out. "So you're talking about people, you're talking about buildings."