By DAVID BOYLE
The Anchorage School Board has developed a next year’s budget based on the Legislature increasing the Base Student Allocation by $560, which would provide the district with an additional $39.8 million for the next school year.
But the district further states that it will have a $74 million budget deficit in 2027.
This is shortsighted at best and counts on the Legislature to provide even more funding when the state is facing a fiscal cliff.
The district allocates about $30 million of the new funding to “direct instruction”, the classroom. This includes increasing the pupil-teacher ratio by only one student versus the original increase of that ratio by four students in the previous FY26 budget.
This “direct instruction” would include funding the IGNITE program, elementary summer school, preschool, Battle of the Books, elementary immersion teachers, and elementary special ed teachers.
It also funds 21 “holdback teachers” and adds another 5 of these teachers who are used to fill in for teachers who are absent from their classrooms. It doesn’t seem like this would be a direct instruction factor. This may provide flexibility, but it could also bea “slush” fund.
The $30 million in new funding pays for more than 213 full-time employees (FTE). Remember, these are positions not real live teachers. Here is the chart showing the $30 million expenditures:
By reversing cuts to the gifted program, elementary school immersion teachers, and adding funding to charter schools, the district has garnered the support of those parent groups to fight for even more funding next year.
The district has decided to use another $9.8 million to pay for “instructional support” employees. These additions are much more controversial and are not directly related to classroom learning.
This includes the following FTEs: 12.5 librarians, 13 elementary nurses, 5 principals, 8 library assistants, 3.5 counselors, and 2.5 elementary counselors. The total FTEs is increased by 59 for a $9.8 million cost.
This chart shows those positions (FTEs) added to the FY26 budget:
Why is the district adding more non-teachers, known as overhead, when it faces a horribly large deficit of $74.5 million in 2027?
Here’s why. The AEA, the ASD teachers’ union, knows very well that it is losing teachers due to the decreasing number of students in the future. Thus, it will be losing union members.
But the AEA also knows that it can increase its membership by adding librarians, nurses, library assistants, and counselors. And that is what’s happening in the ASD FY26 budget.
ASD is gambling that it can extort more funding from the legislature and the AEA can also maintain its membership and power by adding employees this next year.
So, while the school board is adding more personnel back to the budget and adding more costs, it should be saving this funding for the next fiscal year which looks even more bleak.
Adding more personnel when the student population is decreasing and the state is facing a huge fiscal crisis in the coming years is unfathomable.
The administration projects a huge $74.5 million budget hole for the next fiscal year. It could save the $9.8 million shown above for the “instructional support” cost and help fill next year’s budget hole and further avoid giving “pink slips” to newly hired employees.
But it is apparent that the district is counting on getting even more funding from the Legislature next session. That may be very difficult if the price of oil plummets and even more people leave Alaska.
We can look forward to the Education Establishment demanding more money to improve student outcomes even when those outcomes are not linked to more funding.
And that may mean an even smaller PFD — or maybe none at all.
David Boyle is a writer for Must Read Alaska.
I have the solution… give ASD more money! Advocates for more school funding are woefully ignorant, or criminal.
Novel idea, but you could take this article and pretty much find it verbatim 30 years ago, maybe MRAK could post a few of them. Just maybe Alaska voters will wake up.