New Plan to Reduce School Lunch Costs

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Category: News

Created on Friday, 07 March 2025 15:27

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GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer

In a cost saving move, the Sitka School Board voted Wednesday to form its own food service and abandon its school lunch contract with a commercial provider in the coming fiscal year.

The vote came in the board's regular meeting, that as usual dealt primarily with the uncertainty of adequate funding for the fiscal year 2026 budget.

Even with the city funding schools "to the cap," the district faces a $2 million revenue shortfall in the 2026 budget now being drafted.

The meeting was held in the Sheet’ka Kwaan Naa Kahidi clan house, where the board heard a presentation on progress ensuring that Alaska Native kids have full educational and cultural opportunities.

Board member Phil Burdick spoke on the current status of House Bill 69, which would provide extra funding to schools but is still wending its way through the legislative process in Juneau.

The bill, co-sponsored by Sitka Rep. Rebecca Himschoot, calls for a permanent $1,000 increase in the Base Student Allocation. A provision calling for inflation increases in future years was eliminated in committee. The bill also now has amendments supported by Gov. Dunleavy on oversight of charter schools and a ban on phones on school grounds, with some exceptions.

“That's what came out of the negotiations with the governor, the minority, the majority," Burdick said. As amended, the bill also calls for a teacher incentive of $450 for every student that "shows growth" in grades K-6, he said.

"I'm not sure how that's going to work, but I'm sure they'll figure it out. So again, it's time to advocate,” Burdick said.

While the bill has a good bit of support in the state House, Burdick was less optimistic about its future in the Senate.

Sitka Republican Bert Stedman is co-chair of the Senate Finance Committee, "and he would be the person to contact to push House Bill 69 on the Senate side," Burdick said. "He's gone on the record to say that House Bill 69 is, quote, ‘dead in the water’ in the Senate. It's only dead if he says it is, and that doesn't have to be the case.”

As for the School Board's prior budget work session, board member Tom Williams said there were "a lot of comments on what they would like to have that we could add to make our school programs to make school better," but "I didn't really get a lot of takeaways on what's going to help us balance the budget."

Not all financial news at the meeting was bleak, however, as the board unanimously approved a revision adding $733,000 of both savings and additional revenues in the current year's budget.

The funding comes from the $400,000 in additional school funding approved by the Legislature after the Sitka school budget was adopted; $200,000 in savings on library services; and $51,000 of new revenue for student transportation, among other items.

When calculating the cost of retaining a teaching position in making budget cuts, the district uses the figure of about $110,000 per fulltime teacher.

Sitka has not yet received federal funding last year from the Secure Rural Schools Act -- which is presently still in the legislative process in the U.S. Congress -- a program that in recent years has provided $300,000 to the district, district business manager Kathrynn Hollis-Buchanan told the board.

The final cost of insurance is another question mark in the budget, superintendent Deidre Jenson added.

All five board members, Phil Burdick, Tom Williams, Amanda Williams, Steve Morse and Paul Rioux attended the meeting, and passed the budget revision unanimously.

Title VI Hearing

Along with talk of the budget, the School Board heard a presentation by district cultural director Jule LeBlanc, who said participation in Alaska Native cultural programming has risen recently.

While overall school enrollment has fallen in recent years, LeBlanc said in the past year there was a 10 percent increase in students filling out 506 forms, which are used to determine funding under the Title VI Indian Education Formula Grant Program with the U.S. Department of Education. In local public schools, 333 students – about a third of the total enrollment – have a 506 form on file, LeBlanc said.

“Our goals are, with this funding, to provide academic, social, emotional and cultural support for all students who are identified as Alaska Native or American Indian. And as I said, the need is really to increase our 506 forms,” LeBlanc told the board.

There are persistent, lingering gaps in academic performance between Native and non-Native kids in the district, LeBlanc said.

“This isn't new in our district, that we do have a 'demographic discrepancy gap,' we call it,” she said. “There's academic gaps happening between demographic groups. And a lot of the funding that we are using, all of the funding that we're using is to address this.”

Despite difficulties, she was glad to hear students speaking Tlingit in schools.

“One of my favorite things I've seen is the students walking through the halls and using the language so freely, and teachers starting to become more comfortable using the language as well. And we had a lot of non-Native and Native parents report that when their kid goes home from school after having class that day, they're able to share language with their family and teach their family,” LeBlanc reported.

Overall, cultural programming in the school district has risen by 125 percent in the past year, she added, in large part in collaboration with groups like Outer Coast College, Sitka Trail Works, Sitka Conservation Society and Youth Advocates of Sitka.

Phil Burdick was grateful for cultural programming in schools.

“Thank you so much for all that you do for the young people of our community. And really, I think one other thing that I want to say is that as long as I have breath, this partnership will continue to grow and be strong. It means a lot to me,” he said.

Speaking from the public, Sitka Tribal of Alaska Tribal Council secretary Martha Moses said she is optimistic that Indigenous kids in local schools are receiving solid opportunities, and improvements have taken place over time.

“We feel really good about the direction we want to address for the tribal children that are in the schools,” Moses testified. “We had concerns last year because of the cultural report, and that was my first time seeing the cultural report, and my concerns were brought to the committee. and then to the Council, and we'll address it in the strategic plan and further requesting consultation with the School Board and with the staff. We have concerns over the cultural report, and our desire is to improve the results, to address the results that come out of that report.”

Roby Littlefield, the district’s Tlingit language teacher, who teaches elementary schoolers at Xoots, also spoke, emphasizing the importance of teaching kids new languages when they’re young.

“We provide curriculum in English and in Tlingit with the goal of increasing the immersion as we go along, because we're doing something totally different, brand new,” Littlefield said. “This is the perfect age to introduce a second language to children in our schools. They're like little language sponges at this age, we use our Tlingit names in the classroom, and we recognize those students who have clan names by using theirs. We are emphasizing traditional values, like respect for each other, respect for our ancestors and our elders.”

Other Business

The board approved a motion to move district food services in-house, which is estimated to save money and, members hoped, increase food quality. The district’s current contract with NANA Management Services is for $494,000, and superintendent Jenson said the district estimates the new cost will be about $345,000.

“The nice thing about this is that we did apply for a large grant, so if we receive that grant in May, it will save us even more, much longer for the next three years,” Jenson said. “There is another possibility of another grant that we may be receiving... so our savings might be more there as well.”

Tom Williams said he hopes food quality is higher under the new program. -

“Thank you very, very much. Superintendent Jenson for finding a way to bring our food program in-house. I'm very excited about this for a couple of reasons, one the obvious ones, but more importantly, I think we're going to have quality food,” he said.

The in-house food service will use the Sitka High kitchen, and Pacific High will continue its present program using produce from the school garden.

Jenson said there should not be an additional per-meal cost for students with the new district-wide change in the lunch program.

“We basically used to develop this budget, our current lunch costs, because it was based off of what our costs were from before and our reimbursement so there could be some slight changes with our reimbursement rates, because that's not us that chooses those reimbursements rates with free and reduced lunch,” the superintendent said. “It comes from the state.”

The motion passed without opposition.

The board voted down a motion to add a user fee for technology in the district, a measure which would have charged between $50 to $100 annually, depending on a student’s grade level. That fee scale, Jenson noted, could be reduced or eliminated for kids receiving free or reduced lunch.

But board members were opposed to the idea of adding a new cost to families.

“I hate the idea of bringing in a fee,” member Paul Rioux said.

Tom Williams added: “I'd like to see if we could do a better job of determining who would be able to receive financial assistance. I'd like to see a grant or intervention by the superintendent for a student whose parents may not want to provide the money for a fee or a deposit.”

A teacher, speaking from the public, questioned the cumulative cost of the fees, which would approach $1,000 for a student between kindergarten and 12th grade.

The motion failed on the final vote, but on a similar topic, the board approved $38,509 for the purchase of new computers for students.

“We thought we're going to need to replace devices that were not functioning correctly in the district, and the plan, on my part, was to replace those with a device that we had put through the technology committee and tested with students… The expectation is they're going to increase in price in about a week,” SSD IT director Scott McArthur told the board.

The motion passed 4-1 with Tom Williams opposed.

The board meets again March 12 for a policy committee meeting and April 2 for their next regular meeting.