Alaska school districts have incrementally cut staff and services to keep pace with inflation, but in many cases, those cuts have reached a limit, and the issue is coming to a head as districts prepare next year's budgets. (via AlaskaBeacon)
The front of Abbott Loop Elementary School in Anchorage is seen on Wednesday. The school is one of several being considered for closure in Anchorage because of a large budget gap. considering the closure of six elementary schoolsAnchorage isn’t the only district facing a major fiscal problem. At the end of the last school year, Fairbanks closed three schools.
Federal relief funding forestalled the need for major action during the COVID-19 pandemic, but most districts have exhausted that aid or will by next year. Meanwhile, school enrollment is less than what it was before the pandemic, exacerbating a problem created by a funding formula that pays districts per student.
“School board members have to have a balanced budget, and they have to start working on it now,” said Story, who served on the Juneau school board before joining the Legislature., once Alaska’s cost of living is included in the calculation. “Flat funding really is education cuts, year after year after year after year,” said Jim Anderson, chief financial officer of the Anchorage School District.
In the Legislature, conservative Republicans said they first wanted to see improved performance from public schools before increasing spending. Alaska schools perform at or near the bottom of the nation in standardized math and reading tests. Wrangell, a small island community in Southeast Alaska, faced the largest percentage drop in the state between anticipated and actual enrollment in fall 2020. Instead of 308 students, the district’s three schools had only 178. It’s since risen – to 257 last fall and about 263 this fall. But that’s close to 50 students that are no longer in the system.
The decline exacerbates school districts’ problem: Not only have per-student payments failed to keep pace with inflation, districts are getting fewer of those per-student payments because there are fewer students. Potentially closing six additional elementary schools at the end of this school year could save the district . The district still needs to find savings elsewhere. The school board has options to choose from, including dipping into savings and making more cuts. Staff make up 88% of the district’s budget, Anderson said.
“We took a pretty comprehensive look at it and said, ‘Okay, this isn’t an efficient use of square footage in dollars.’ So we made that shift. And I think we’ll see more of that happening across the state,” Melin said. “There’s just no way to balance a $14 million deficit in a budget that has 86% personnel without it dipping into personnel. So how that’s going to look, I don’t know yet,” she said. “We can have a lot of really expensive staff, or more less-expensive staff, and that’s kind of the balance that we have to look at.”
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