During that last couple of months worth of school board finance meetings, Liz Hayes has started with a similar introduction.
“So as you recall, at the last meeting, I presented a budget that is $16.9 million in a deficit,” she said last Monday. “That has not changed.”
She’s the finance director for the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District. And for the last few months, she’s focused on one number: 16,935,754. That’s how many dollars the district is currently short if it wants to operate next fiscal year with the same amount of employees, programs and facilities as it does right now.
“There is nothing new added to this budget,” Hayes explains. “This is status quo, meaning no new programs were added and nothing has been cut.”
As school board members grapple with how to make up the difference, they’re asking for ideas from the public. Earlier this week, the district launched a gamified version of its budget cut process, called Balancing Act. At a finance committee meeting last week, school board members put the finishing touches on the software.
The district says part of what makes the budget process so difficult is that they don’t always know how much money they have to work with. As the board built out the Balancing Act software, they debated whether to bet on getting more money from the state.
“Right now seems to not be as helpful in that you literally have to – that revenue coming in – you literally have to just wipe the board,” said Board Member Kelley Cizek. “And so I think that it is going to be easier to at least figure out a couple of things to cut.”
Kenai school district officials have joined others from around Alaska in calling on state lawmakers to increase and inflation-proof the base amount of money they get per student. That amount is called the base student allocation, or BSA.
The BSA has stated the same for almost a decade, not counting a half-percent increase two years ago. In some cases, including in recent years, lawmakers have approved one-time money outside the state formula. Districts and public education advocates say predictable funding is just as important as more funding.
One bill introduced this session – House Bill 69 – would increase and inflation-proof the BSA. But Gov. Mike Dunleavy has indicated he won’t support more money absent some of his other education priorities. Last year, he vetoed a bipartisan, omnibus education bill for that reason. Dunleavy introduced his own education bill last week, which funds specific initiatives rather than the BSA.
School Board president Zen Kelly says he’s not holding out hope for the House bill.
“I did not see a single dollar in the BSA coming from the governor,” he said last week. “And I can almost guarantee that he will be vetoing any legislation that comes forward — House Bill 69 if it gets movement and traction. He absolutely will. That is the reality. That's the reality we're facing right now.”
Kenai Peninsula school board members met Tuesday to talk about how closing certain schools could save the district money as it tries to make up the $17 million gap. But Kelly say no amount of cuts can fix the underlying problem.
“I keep hoping that our legislature and our governor will step up and do their job, and we can stop having these kinds of conversations that rip communities apart,” he said. “So I will have the conversation this year, because we are absolutely at that point. But this does not need to let the legislature off the hook into adequately funding our schools.”
Last week, lawmakers started meeting with Dunleavy behind closed doors to try and hash out an agreement. Senate Majority members said Tuesday those discussions got off to a productive start.
On top of the Balancing Act software, the district is also preparing for a circuit of three public meetings to present the budget problem and gather feedback. The meeting trio kicks off Tuesday in Homer and will come to the central peninsula on Feb. 19 at 6 p.m. at Kenai Central High School.
