Kenai Peninsula school board members passed a budget last night that cuts more than $9 million worth of programs and employees – and closes two schools. The vote capped a tumultuous few months of work to solve a $17 million budget shortfall ahead of the fiscal year that starts in July. And Wednesday’s meeting wasn’t without a fresh set of tough decisions.
Even before the special meeting started, the Betty J. Glick assembly chambers in Soldotna were a sea of crimson – that’s Sterling Elementary School’s color. Dozens of attendees were there protesting the school’s closure with signs taped to the dais and t-shirts worn by audience members.
Closing the school was one of dozens of cuts made by school board members trying to reconcile a multimillion dollar budget gap.
Maria Chythlook is the school’s physical education and art teacher. She says it’s going to be difficult not to see her students move through their school career.
“I know you have to do what you have to do, but just know that you're gutting us and all of our students,” she said. “The very first kid that walked in the building today said, ‘Hey, Coach, when are we closing? Do I get to go here next year?’ Do you know how hard it is to tell the child we don't know? Please reconsider. There are other ways. You do not have to take our school away.”
Sterling Elementary second grader Tobin Stratton-Todd told board members P.E. is his favorite class. He held a cardboard sign that said “I love my school.”
“I just don’t really want my school to close,” he said.
But closing Sterling Elementary is just one of many cuts the district will implement to balance its budget. The cuts also include elementary school counselors, teachers in the district’s gifted and talented program, student support liaisons and the district’s middle college program.
The cuts also mean bigger classrooms sizes, less work days for instructional and special education aides, halving resources for distance education programs and cutting staff for school pools and theaters. The budget also closes the K-12 school in Nikolaevsk.
Emerson Kapp, the board’s student representative, called the cuts heartbreaking.
“It's kind of like taking a home from someone and taking it away brick by brick,” she said. “You still technically have a building, but you're slowly not making it a home anymore, until it's just a floor and doesn't have a roof or walls anymore.”
Multiple board members emphasized the budget is just a draft. That’s because it relies on a lot of guesswork.
For example, the budget assumes a $680 increase to the base amount of money school districts get per student. If that amount clears both chambers of the Alaska State Legislature and Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto, it’d bring in over $11.4 million dollars to the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District. Dunleavy vetoed a $1,000 BSA increase last week, and lawmakers upheld that veto Tuesday.
The budget also assumes full funding from the Kenai Peninsula Borough. But Mayor Peter Micciche has already said he’s proposing less than that amount – $4.75 million less. To address that, the budget includes roughly $4 million worth of contingency funds.
And Micciche told board members there may be some wiggle room there.
“We'll wait and see what the legislature does, and then we get back together and talk about remaining needs,” he said. “We can do a supplemental right after that process is over, but I say it again, funding higher at that amount at this point is a fool's errand. We have got to put the responsibility where it lies, and that is at the feet of every legislator and the governor.”
And the budget doesn’t factor in raises for teachers and support staff. The district’s currently negotiating with its two largest employee unions, which are asking for a combined total of over $15 million in raises at status quo staffing levels. It’s not clear where that money would come from. The district’s human resources director says his team won’t agree to any agreement it can’t afford.
Board member Tim Daugharty said he’s tired of being the “whipping boy” and that school districts need to push back against what he said are bullying tactics by the state over education funding.
“The way we go about this – for us to submit a budget before we know what we're doing is just, it doesn't work for any of us, and the results are unintended consequences that are really negative for all of us,” he said.
Virginia Morgan represents the eastern peninsula on the board. She agreed Dunleavy’s approach is flawed. She specifically criticized his proposed reading incentive grants, which would give more money to districts that demonstrate literacy growth among elementary students.
“This does not make sense to me,” she said. “We do not tell public safety that as soon as they bring down crime, they can hire more police officers. Or, ‘We’ll increase the corrections budget as soon as the prison population declines.’”
Before passing the budget, school board members also adopted an amendment outlining what cuts they’ll reverse if the district gets more money. The amendment asks the state for a $1,000 per-student funding increase, which it says would keep Sterling Elementary open, retain the middle college program and bring back bilingual tutors and student support liaisons, among other things.
By passing the budget Wednesday, the board met its May 1 deadlines. Now, the budget heads to the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly, which has 30 days to respond. That response will determine the minimum amount of money the borough will give the district this year. The assembly’s next meeting is May 6. Assembly members must pass a borough budget by the end of June.
A full list of the cuts included in the school district budget can be found on the school district’s website.
