A road sign marks the road towards the Lower Kuskokwim School District offices and the Bethel High School. October 9, 2023. (Photo by Claire Stremple/Alaska Beacon)
In Alaska’s rural communities, the school budget conversation no longer starts with new ideas but with what we must give up next. I see this firsthand as a school principal in Kotzebue.
For years, districts across rural Alaska have trimmed budgets, delayed expenses, and stretched every dollar they could find. Programs have been reduced. Positions have gone unfilled. Class sizes have crept upward. Staff members wear more hats each year. What remains is a system held together by dedication and grit rather than stable funding. There comes a point where there is nothing left to trim.
The costs of rural education are fundamentally different from those in urban Alaska: dramatically higher energy costs, unpredictable and expensive transportation costs, and a recruitment model that requires travel and relocation costs. In most communities, districts must also provide housing for teachers simply to make staffing possible. These are not luxuries. They are the basic conditions required to operate a school in remote Alaska.
Meanwhile, inflation has driven up nearly every operational expense. Fuel, food service supplies, maintenance materials, shipping and insurance all cost significantly more than they did only a few years ago. Yet the base level of education funding has not kept pace with those realities. Small adjustments do not solve a structural gap.
The result has been deep cuts across rural districts that students see immediately. We have fewer programs, larger classes, less individualized instruction and fewer adults available to support students who are struggling academically or behaviorally. Teachers and staff are working harder than ever, but the margin to meet student needs continues to shrink. As morale suffers, turnover increases, compounding the issue.
For rural schools, consolidation is not an option. Schools serve as the center for community life, language preservation, and opportunity for future generations. Students should not have to leave their community to receive a quality education.
Alaska can demonstrate that it values our rural schools by taking three practical steps.
First, education funding would have to increase at a level that reflects the real cost of operating schools today. Incremental increases that lag behind inflation simply force districts to continue cutting.
Second, Alaska would have to forward fund our schools. Districts cannot responsibly plan staffing, housing, and transportation logistics when they do not know their budget until the end of summer break just as the school year begins.
Third, Alaska would have to strengthen educator retention. One of the most powerful tools the state once had was a defined benefit pension system that encouraged experienced teachers to build long careers in Alaska’s schools. Rural districts feel the loss of that stability every year as recruitment becomes harder and turnover increases.
Rural Alaska school districts are at the point where every cut removes an opportunity. Every unfilled position reduces support for students. Every year of uncertainty makes it harder to recruit the teachers our communities depend on. Rural schools are not asking for excess. They are asking for the resources necessary to provide the constitutionally mandated education Alaska’s children deserve.
The question now is whether the state will choose to invest in those communities or continue asking them to do more with less until there is nothing left to give.
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Courtesy of Alaska Beacon
