The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District is estimating a $3.3 million budget deficit by students’ start date in August and they’re looking for ideas from the community to combat that.
During the KPBSD Facebook Live Q&A on Feb 1, Assistant Superintendent Dave Jones asked that parents and community members, “do your homework before you come” to the upcoming budget sessions.
Assist. Super. Jones: “That’s why we’ve posted the information we’ve given to the board, as we did in January with them. We have a 3.3 million deficit, the board’s committed to use 1.3, that means we’re looking at how are we going to deal with 2 million. so what we’re asking people to do is loook that information that we’ve provided, talk to your principals, get educated before that meeting, and we’re going to start this time, not with a review of where we’re at revenue and expenditure wise but we’re going to start with what can we do.”
For those who’d like to be involved but can’t make the KPBSD’s budget sessions, Jones pressed the importance of contacting state legislators since about 70% of funding comes from state allocations.
Assist. Super. Jones: “[With] the legislators currently trying to put together a fiscal plan, if people not only tell them that the expenditures on education are important but they’re willing to support those through a sales tax, an income tax, some sort of additional revenue the state can use to fund the education, that’ll go a long ways to helping with it.”
Another way the legislature has been looking to cut costs for Alaskan school districts is trying to find other options for health care, a top cost for districts.
Assist. Super. Jones: “There needs to be some accountability on the healthcare side so I think on the cost side that could help. And then I think one of the things that the legislature has looked at is if we take all of the people that work for the state, school districts, municipalities, and we all were in the same pool, bargaining-wise with the medical community we’d be in a lot different position than we currently are if we all go individually to them.”
Jones says another impactful way to the importance of funding for the KPBSD with legislators is by sharing success stories of local children to demonstrate how the funds allocated by the state are used.
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