By KLAS STOLPE
Sentinel Staff
Sitka School Board members held what was to be their second-to-last public hearing on the fiscal year 2020 budget Monday night, but in the work session that followed they decided that with the lack of funding information from the state, another public hearing and work session will be held April 12.
The Monday hearing in the Sitka High library was supposed to be the last before the final public hearing April 17, when the board plans to adopt the budget.
The board will have its regular meeting 6:30 p.m. Wednesday night at the ANB Founders Hall, preceded by reception, and at 6 p.m. Thursday the board will meet with the Assembly to talk over budget issues.
“We don’t know what we’re looking at,” board member Dionne Brady-Howard said at the work session. “We need a better idea.”
Brady-Howard said she wasn’t comfortable voting on a nebulous figure, not knowing how much the city will contribute, and not wanting a last-minute surprise. She said that while the board has a potential program picture of what could be cut she felt the public hadn’t been given the chance to weigh in.
Board president Jennifer McNichol said, “We’re all kind of moving along the path of staffing cuts but still there is a lot on what we don’t know our bottom line number is going to be.”
The board plans to send McNichol and board member Elias Erickson to Juneau later this week for another fly-in of school boards around the state to lobby for school funding.
District Superintendent Mary Wegner said it was at the point where programs are going to be cut and advocacy is critical.
“First and foremost it is the needs of the students,” she said. “Ninety-nine percent of the time that will be the determining factor.”
McNichol explained a slide show the board reviewed:
The deficit the board is working to address is currently estimated at $1,689,103 – this was adjusted upward from $1.38 million because of uncertainty about the status of the previously-passed FY20 education funding legislation. McNichol was not confident that they will receive the portion of the $30 million included in that (which equates to over $300,000 for the Sitka School District). If both the House and Senate chose to leave that legislation intact from last session, the district would receive that funding, along with flat-funding of the base student allocation. The board continues to plan to use unassigned fund balance (of $205,334), non-personnel efficiencies ($28,750), and an additional enrollment-decline-related staffing cut (special ed teacher position) to reduce that deficit to $1,355,019.
Other measures being considered are:
-- Issuing a request for proposals for Community Schools’ services at zero dollars, meaning the school district pays only for building maintenance and utilities and the contractor would cover other expenses through user fees.
-- Sharing PAC expenses with Alaska Arts Southeast (Sitka Fine Arts Camp) and the city, saving $155,000. SFAC would cover $112,000 of that expense.
-- Estimating FY20 staff insurance-related costs to include $200,000 less than originally budgeted.
-- Estimated savings (of $50,000) from less spent on heat and substitute teacher expenses for this year (FY19).
These measures would bring the deficit down to $850,019. Remaining options at this point largely involve staffing cuts, so the board looked at how teacher cuts at different schools would affect class sizes. (Three teaching position cuts at the elementary level are already planned based on enrollment estimates.)
Different scenarios were presented, including cuts from 1 to 6 positions at different grade levels. Elementary class sizes as high as 28 were projected if 3 additional teachers are cut from grades K-5; secondary class sizes up to 27 were projected. The potential elimination of whole programs and course offerings at the secondary level was also noted, as individual teachers often provide unique options.
In public testimony before the work session only four people spoke.
REACH home school coordinator Colleen Carol stated that their full time equivalent (FTE) of 16 students, is actually comprised of 20 students from half-time to full-time enrolled.
“And it is the only number considered when discussing budget concerns,” she said. “But those are not the only students REACH serves. What that number of 16 FTE doesn’t tell you is that we also serve 33 other students in the district. These students come to REACH so they can still work towards their educational and athletic goals, even if the course they want to take is not offered at our schools or if they have scheduling conflicts ....”
Carol said REACH is the entity that provides support for a successful student, and said some of the protocols at the middle and high schools could potentially be preserved at the discretion of the administration as staffing numbers allow.
“And without REACH the 16 FTE count, made up of those 20 families who value choice in education, and who supported this by choosing REACH, would be a straight loss for a district’s funding,” she said. “With teacher positions being considered for elimination due to budget cuts and the possibility of larger class sizes in all district schools, more families may end up home schooling. Without REACH as an option for local families our district has no way of keeping these home school students in our district. If you only look at the number 16, yes, REACH seems like the least painful option for budget cuts. But REACH provides so much more than that for our students. In the long term not having this option within our district could be very harmful to our student numbers.”
Keet Gooshi Heen music teacher Susan Brandt-Ferguson said she had been going to these meeting for decades and noticed a change recently in how little is known at this stage of the budget process pertaining to what the cuts will actually look like.
“I have had people come to me and ask ‘What are they talking about?’ and I feel like, even though it is April, that I don’t really know,” she said. “And I am not sure, I know that administration has to make decisions as a group... “
Brandt-Ferguson noted that board member Dionne Brady-Howard had felt blindsided last year when the library cut happened.
“And I guess I’m just hoping that, if there has to be cuts, that we find out what they are going to be soon,” she said, “so that people can respond. I don’t see a lot of people here tonight and unfortunately I think that might be part of the issue is just knowing what in the world is being thought of.”
Brandt-Ferguson also noted that at the secondary level, while study halls can be useful, she feels that when paring the budget down, focusing on instruction is worth more than a study hall.
Student Eric Alvarado, 16, said he would have been lost without closer teacher contacts in elementary school and an alternative educational choice like Pacific High. Baranof teacher Joe Montagna followed saying he didn’t mind spending his three minutes talking about Alvarado because “I am so glad you have a story, I am so glad that if any one of us touched you to keep fighting the good fight..”
The final opportunities for public budget testimony will be during persons to be heard at Wednesday’s school board meeting at the ANB Founders Hall; at the Friday, April 12, 6 p.m. special work session in the Sitka High library, and at the board’s April 17 meeting, prior to the board’s vote on approval of a final budget.
The budget will then be forwarded to the Assembly, which will approve the amount of school funding to be provided from local sources.
