School Board Passes Kodiak Island Borough School District Budget

Kayla Desroches/KMXT

The Kodiak Island Borough School District budget went into effect at the start of the new fiscal year on Saturday. The Board of Education finalized that document at its regular meeting earlier in June.

This year’s budget adds up to about $45,500,000. That’s a change from last year’s amount of roughly $48,500,000.

During discussion, board member Duncan Fields took issue with a change on the item “other purchased services.” He said it ended up being about $400,000 more than the amount listed in the preliminary budget that the board agreed on back in April. He said the change came as a surprise.

“I held myself out in my reputation individually and as a board member to the community in conversations to the borough that that was the number, the number we brought forward. I feel as though I didn’t have all the information I needed to make that representation to the community and the borough.”

He said board members shouldn’t relate information to the public that will change so soon afterwards.

School district purchasing supervisor, Sandy Daws, explained how they came to the new amount. She said some of the costs under “other purchased services” are agreements the district is obligated to.

“Our entire administrative team has went through each one of those contracts and has reduced or eliminated ones that we didn’t feel that we wanted to carry forth. So, I feel that we’ve done a diligent job and continue to do that in other purchase services.”

Fields said he would have liked the board to have been better informed.

Board President Robert Foy said in the future it would help for the board to learn more about the dynamic process of creating a budget and how the administrative team arrives at a budget estimate.

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