By DAVID BOYLE

After poring through 474 pages of the ASD budget for school year 2025-26, I have come up with some areas where the district can save money and actually fill its entire budget hole of $4.3 million. It doesn’t need any more funding from the state.

Remember, a budget is a planning document that forecasts incoming revenue and outgoing expenses.  For example, a teacher in the ASD is costed at $110,000 for budgeting purposes.  But some cost more and some cost less.

In this column I will focus on the Full time Equivalents (FTE) versus the budget numbers because 87% of the ASD budget is salaries and benefits. And an FTE represents personnel salaries and benefits. That is where the money is.  

There are several overall findings throughout the budget that reveal how the district has reduced positions mostly at the less costly FTE levels. So, it can maintain that it has reduced the number of personnel but one must know if these reductions were of the higher or lower cost FTEs. At its headquarters the district has reduced the number of lower cost FTEs and retained the higher cost FTEs.  

The district must contend with a decreasing student population, and it expects to lose an additional 107 students for the next school year.  For the 2025-26 school year the district projects a student count of 38,821 plus an additional 2,000 correspondence students.

It is also restricted by the school board guardrails. One of the board’s guardrails states, “Superintendent will not operate elementary schools without mental health services.”  This is a costly mandate to the superintendent and reduces his flexibility to reduce the budget.

The district used one-time federal ESSER (Covid) funds to pay for more than 530 FTEs in FY24.  Four hundred and ninety-seven of these were teacher FTEs. These were not recurring funds, so they were not available for the following years.  It increased the per student costs by $500, $781, $273 in FY 22, FY23, and FY24, respectively.  Now it is counting on the legislature to backfill these lost funds.

That is one way the district dug its huge budget hole. One could call this fiscal irresponsibility, as the district was advised by the Department of Education & Early Development not to spend ESSER funds on recurring expenses, such as employee salaries and benefits.

The General Fund is the day-to-day operating fund and that is what I will focus on.  In FY24 that fund was about $623M and in FY26 it is about $595M, a decrease of 4.7%. Much of that decrease can be attributed to the decrease in the number of students from 42,156 to 40,821, a loss of 1,335 students.

Here is a list of potential savings that the ASD can use to back fill its budget deficit:

1. One source of revenue that the district does not include due to accounting rules is the E-rate revenue it receives.  In FY24 the district received $620,979 in E-rate revenue.  This should be counted as prospective revenue for FY26 because it will come.
2. The DEI/Community Engagement department was funded at $584,858 for FY24, $603,621 for FY25 and $724,122 for FY26.  This is an increase of 20% from FY25 to FY26.  This department could be reduced to zero and save $724,122.  At least, reduce the “professional & technical” line item by $102,000, the budgeted increase for FY26.
3. Communications & External Affairs.  Knowing the importance of controlling the message, the ASD headquarters has two people assigned as “Assistant Director of Communications”.  In FY26 there is an increase from one to three directors since FY23.  Information is power and the superintendent learned this lesson very well.  One director FTE should be reduced at a savings of at least $179,000.
4. Here is a fine example of bureaucratic bloat:    

Note these are all certificated teacher FTEs.  While the number of classroom teachers has decreased substantially, the number of directors has increased.  Although there may not be a cost savings, the number of directors should be reduced and those FTEs put into the classroom where the learning occurs. But wait, there’s more!

• Human Resources has six directors!  Total Salaries/benefits=$ 4,638,003.  Why are there six directors?   One FTE was even moved from classified FTE to certificated FTE.  Recommend reducing the six directors to four. Estimated cost savings = $350,000 (unable to disaggregate all 32 FTEs total for the department).   
• Mental Health Department: Here is a great example of bureaucratic bloat. In FY 22 there was no department. In FY25 there were 4.5 FTEs that were certificated and in FY 26 there were 3.5 FTEs that were certificated.  Its budget has gone from zero in FY22 to $1,777,433 in FY26. It is questionable why there are certificated teachers in the mental health department.  
• Middle School Education. There is one certificated FTE — and that person makes $414,117 in salary and at least another $70,000 in benefits. This is much more costly than the superintendent. This represents almost four classroom teachers.  
• There are five IT directors and 98 IT professionals. This department does not write software or code.  Reduce the directors to 3 and decrease IT professionals to 90.  Estimated savings: ($10,073,172/98) X 10 =$1,027,875.  This does not include benefits and does not allow for higher director salaries as well.  

The above savings total $3,003,976 based on salary savings alone. But benefits in the district are at least  60% of salary. So, add the $1,802,000 in benefit savings and the grand total is $4,806,361.

Now the ASD budget hole has been back filled. So, no need to override the governor’s veto, at least for the largest district in Alaska.

You can find the ASD 2025-26 budget here.

David Boyle is the education writer for Must Read Alaska.