Board members attended the annual meeting of the Alaska Association of School Boards in Anchorage in November, and the financial workshops were discouraging.
President Phil Burdick shared the news at the board’s regular meeting Wednesday night (12-4-24).
“Just a reminder that there’s no new money in next year’s budget, and that we need to advocate for continued funding from the legislature,” said Burdick. “The numbers that we often hear are $340 and $680. I don’t know where they pulled those out of, but $680 was what was put in the budget last year, one time funding. If we get that $680 again this year, we will still be $1.9 million in the hole. If we want to keep our current levels of staffing, our current levels of program, we would need $1,490 from the state. So that is the number that I would like you all to remember. And I think $1,500 is easier to remember, so we should probably just go there. So when we start telling our story, that’s the number that I hope that we can work with.”
The budgeting for the current school year was a rollercoaster, with the legislature passing – almost unanimously – the first significant increase in education funding for Alaska’s schools since 2016 (SB 140), only to have the bill vetoed by Gov. Dunleavy. The effort to override the veto failed by one vote.
In the end, the governor allowed $680 per student in one-time supplemental funding to go to schools, but it wasn’t enough to save all the teaching positions that had been cut in Sitka and in other districts, or prevent school closures in Juneau, Fairbanks, and Anchorage.
Sitka distributed the impact of the cuts over all its buildings, and completely offloaded the maintenance department and the Blatchley Swimming Pool to the city.
Still, some popular programs are gone, including Blatchley’s Discover Your Potential week, when students would set aside traditional academics each spring to explore everything from archery to podcasting.
Burdick continued.
“ “Staff just doesn’t have enough slack to be able to make that heavy lift.”
Although budgeting is tight, the board did approve one major expense: Members agreed to spend $37,000 to purchase phones that operate on the Microsoft Teams platform. Superintendent Deidre Jenson said the district currently spends over $7,000 per month on phone service. Teams will cost about $1,400 – amounting to a monthly savings of over $5,000.
The board had some reservations about moving communications to an internet-based platform, after the two-week outage experienced in town last August and September. Superintendent Jenson said the district had a Starlink as backup, and district IT manager Scott MacArthur assured the board that landlines still connected alarm systems to emergency services.
The board approved the purchase 4-0, with Stephen Morse absent and excused.
