“Am I thankful for the 500 inside the BSA? Yes,” said Cyndy Mika, the Kodiak Island Borough School District’s superintendent. “Is it very much money? No. And is it less than we got from the state last year? Yes.”
The state approved $680 per student in a one-time boost last year.
Increasing education funding has been a massive back and forth between the Alaska Legislature and Gov. Dunleavy.
The Legislature approved three bills in the last two years to increase the formula, all of which were vetoed. Then, in May of this year, legislators overturned another veto, giving schools a $700 per-student permanent increase.
But Dunleavy cut that down to $500 per student in a line-item veto in early June, saying with low oil prices, the state government can’t afford it.
Mika wasn’t surprised when he made the announcement.
“He warned us – we all knew it was going to happen,” she said. “We were just waiting for the day it did, and we didn’t know until the day he announced it how much it would be.”
Alaska Senate President Gary Stevens of Kodiak disagrees with the governor, and said legislators planned for that increase despite lower revenue.
For now, Kodiak’s school district is in a complicated situation.
Mika said the district only planned for a $340 per student increase, but in doing so, also planned to drain their fund balance, or reserves.
“By wiping out the fund balance – almost $5 million – that’s how much deficit we’re starting with next year, without even looking at step and column increases for our staff,” she said.
Any extra money will just go back into the district’s fund balance, but Mika suspects there won’t be much leftover.
“We had agreed to, if there was a raise in the BSA, that a certain amount of that would be dedicated to salaries.,” Mika said.
Had Kodiak schools gotten the full $700 increase, they could have had an estimated $1.5 million more to cushion any cuts next year.
“Even the $700 wasn’t going to save us, right? It’s difficult,” she said. “And on top of that – the instability with federal funding. We still don’t know exactly what federal grants we’re going to get and how much they are going to be.”
President Donald Trump issued an executive order in March asking the Secretary of Education to “facilitate the closure of the Department of Education.” That could put some of the district’s federal grants at risk, like for special needs students.
Mika said it's unlikely the district will have to lay anyone off next year, but some people may be offered different jobs than what they’ve had in the past.
“None of the conversations are easy when you’re having to do involuntary transfers,” she said.
School districts must submit their final budgets to the state by July 15.
