FAIRBANKS – Facing a looming $4.5 million deficit, the Fairbanks North Star Borough school board today is set to amend or approve the district’s operating budget for the upcoming school year.
The proposed budget includes cuts to areas in both the classroom and administration, but district officials have focused primarily on the effect the shortfall would have on class sizes. If no additional state funding emerges in the next few months, the district is poised to lay off about 40 classroom teachers because of budget cuts and lower enrollment.
Superintendent Pete Lewis shared harsh criticism of the Legislature’s hesitation to increase the allocation in recent years with the school board Monday.
“We have heard from some legislators that this is a school management issue and not a school funding issue. I disagree with that statement,” Lewis said. “We are at a place where our classrooms will be affected. Enough is enough. It is time to stop this nonsense.”
Reticence by the Legislature to raise the base student allocation during the last several years has, in part, caused local education leaders to turn for support to the borough.
Board member Sue Hull declared at the board’s budget meeting Monday that the district should request an additional $1.5 million from the borough for the upcoming budget. In its proposed budget, the district already requested an additional $880,000 to offset an equal drop in state funding. The state reduced the funding because the tax base in the borough increased.
“First and foremost, we need to ask the borough for another million and a half,” Hull said. “But I also think that we need to in some way talk about what we would do with that million and a half so that we can have advocates say, ‘If you give us this million and a half here are the things that would be reinstated.’”
The state requires every borough or municipality to fund a certain amount of its school district’s budget. To comply with federal equity standards, however, those municipalities can’t fund past a certain point.
In Fairbanks, the required local contribution last fiscal year was nearly $27 million. The maximum allowable local contribution for Fairbanks during that same fiscal year was $61.7 million. The Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly chose to provide $48.3 million.
The borough’s education funding equals about 78 percent of the maximum allowed, and the $880,000 increase would keep the borough at the same level. An additional $1.5 million would bump the borough’s contribution to about 82 percent.
Hull said the people of the borough have been supportive of their schools but felt the local funding wasn’t accurately reflecting that support.
“Our community is well below the maximum the state allows,” Hull said.
Two of the other major municipalities in the state, Anchorage and Juneau, fund 100 percent of their maximum allowable local contributions to their respective school districts.
“I don’t think our community supports schools any less than theirs, but our local contribution doesn’t count for that,” Hull said. “We’re not asking to get all the way to 100 percent like these other communities.”
Kenai, one of the largest school districts in the state and similar in size to Fairbanks, receives about 96 percent of the maximum allowable local contribution from its borough.
The school board is set to vote on its proposed budget Wednesday evening. The borough assembly is set to review the district’s proposal and set the local contribution in early April.
Contact staff writer Weston Morrow at 459-7520. Follow him on Twitter: @FDNMschools.
