David Boyle: An unvarnished look at the Anchorage School District’s actual spending increases

By DAVID BOYLE

The Anchorage School Board will determine next year’s budget on Tuesday, Feb. 25 at its board meeting. The board wants to spend more than $100 million more than it did just five years ago on its managed funds.

The district always compares next year’s funding to the previous year. But it is more informative to look back and see what the funding was five years ago.  

The General Fund spending will increase from $550 million to $594 million.

Here is a chart showing the spending over the past five years:

Note the district’s managed total increase of more than $100 million. This chart does not include the $50 million cost of PERS/TRS retirement.

Also note the rather huge $20 million mistake in the superintendent’s memo to the board compared to the “ASD Managed Total for FY2025-26” above:

“Consistent with the upper limit budget set in the Board’s pro forma financial planning guidance and updated revenue projections, the total Anchorage School District managed funds for FY 2025-26 is $886.250 million, or about 3.1 percent below the prior year.”

But it’s only a matter of pennies when it comes to the ASD.

The student population also needs to be addressed. The district has lost 1,302 students since 2022. It now has 41,598 students including the 2,000 Correspondence students who do not require infrastructure.

Board member Dave Donley has offered amendments to save about $2.8 million while saving hockey, gymnastics, swimming, and all middle school sports. The district threatens to delete these programs in an effort to get parents’ support for more and more spending.

Donley proposes deleting funding for the following membership organizations:

• Coalition for Education Equity membership ($32,000)
• Council of Great City Schools ($48,000)
• Alaska Association of School Boards ($32,000)
• National School Board Association ($8,600)

The Coalition for Education Equity has currently threatened to sue the State of Alaska for not funding K-12 to the group’s satisfaction. The CEEIfunds itself through lawsuits. It won the Kasayulie case and got $2 billion put into new school construction/renovation in rural areas. It also won the Moore v State case and got even more funding for public schools with no accountability for results.

The Alaska Association of School Boards doesn’t need our money. It received an astounding $3,997,580 grant from the US Department of Education.  

Do you remember how the National School Board Association colluded with the US Department of Education to get the FBI to harass parents who testified at school board meetings?  Should we fund that organization with our dollars?

All the above nonprofits use their public funds to lobby for even more public funds from the Alaska Legislature. They are almost always asked to provide “invited testimony” to increase the Base Student Allocation with no requirement for accountability in results.

Donley also wants to do away with the Office of Equity and Compliance. This would save about $419,000. The US DOE will soon issue directions to all states to remove DEI from their programs/curricula. That deletion would appear to be a no-brainer.

Here are some more of Donley’s individual amendments to restore programs and reduce other expenses:

1. Discontinue the Middle School Model extra planning period and restore the Ignite program, saving $381,000 or;
2. Discontinue the Middle School Model extra planning period and restore 12 teachers to the language immersion schools, saving $1.9 million or;
3. Discontinue the Middle School Model extra planning period and restore the Deaf & Hard of Hearing Department/School at a savings of $2.8 million or;
4. Discontinue the Middle School Model extra planning period and reduce the projected class sizes of K-4^th grade by two students. This would have a net zero effect on cost yet provide a much better pupil/teacher ratio in the classroom.
5. Reduce the number of high school assistant principals by four with a savings of $644,000.
6. Reduce the number of middle school assistant principals by two for a savings of $498,000.

The board can avoid discussing any of these amendments by not seconding the motion by Donley to move the amendments.  The board has done this most of the time when Donley brings up a subject the rest of the board does not want to discuss in public.

All of board member Donley’s budget amendments can be seen here.

There are other amendments offered by board members Carl Jacobs and Kelly Lessens which would consume the extra $71.7 million the district would get from the passage of House Bill 69, which the governor has indicated he will veto. HB 69 would increase the base student allocation by $1,000 per student at a total cost of $257 million — and there seems to be no source offered for the expenditure.

You have a chance and a duty to testify at the Feb. 25 board meeting, which begins at 6 p.m. You can either provide written or oral testimony. Here is link to the agenda.  Here is a link on how to testify.

David Boyle is the education writer at Must Read Alaska.

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