The Sitka Assembly is meeting in special session Thursday (4-25-19) to discuss the General Fund budget, but school advocates are hoping to tip the discussion toward education.

The Sitka School Board on April 17 passed a budget for next year that cuts eight staff positions — but it’s significantly above what the City of Sitka is proposing to contribute to the district next year, by over a half-million dollars.

The advocacy effort is being led by a group called Families for Schools, which hopes one-hundred people will turn out to testify on behalf of schools Thursday evening.

Beth Short-Rhoads and other like-minded parents organized Families for Schools last fall, under the name Families for School Libraries. At the time, they wanted to restore the Blatchley librarian position, which had been cut for this school year.

“Because a library is there for all students at Blatchley,” Short-Rhoads told KCAW in December. “It’s there for every student at the school. The librarian services are spread out among all the students, so when you take away a librarian, you’re taking away something important from every student.”

But Families for School Libraries changed its name and its focus after Gov. Mike Dunleavy unveiled a state budget proposal in February that — if passed unamended by the legislature — would roll back state education funding by $300 million dollars, and force school districts to make unprecedented cuts in staff and services.

In passing its budget last week, the Sitka School District — like many schools statewide — is betting that the legislature will work out a moderate compromise for funding education that represents much less of a threat to jobs. But any deal will likely put more of a burden on municipalities to make up the difference.

At last count (on the April 17 school board meeting) over a half-million dollars separated the school district’s budget request from the proposed local contribution from the Sitka Assembly.

For most of this spring’s budget discussion, that difference has been $750,000, but it’s since been shaved down to $546,000. Nevertheless, under the district’s budget-estimating formula, it represents at least five full-time teaching jobs.

KCAW will livestream this Thursday’s special assembly budget meeting on our Facebook page, Raven Radio.