The state of Alaska is set to appeal the federal government’s decision to potentially withhold millions of dollars in school funding over Alaska’s failure to provide pandemic funding to four of the state’s highest-need schools. On Wednesday, the Alaska Department of Early Education announced that the state will appeal the U.S. Department of Education’s threat to withhold $17.5 million.
A letter sent last year by federal officials from the U.S. Department of Education said that during the 2021-22 school year, the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District was shorted funding to the tune of just over $5 million. “Alaska has not yet demonstrated compliance with the FY 2022 maintenance of equity requirements for at least three highest-poverty local educational agencies [LEA],” the letter stated.
On Friday, the U.S. Education Department announced that it would withhold another $5.6 million in COVID relief funding from Alaska in addition to the $11.9 million announced in July. The government says the sum equals the per-student amounts that Alaska cut from the budgets of four of the state’s highest-poverty schools during the 2022 and 2023 budget years.
Needless to say, the news seemingly adds insult to injury for school districts around the state fighting to limp deficit-plagued budgets along with no long-term funding solutions coming from the state.
“Next year, we’re projected for a $17 million deficit, and to make it through this year, we are spending a good part of our fund balance from last year,” said KPBSD Superintendent Clayton Holland. “Times are tight, as you know, all around the state, and education and any bit helps. …We have not counted on this funding just because of all the uncertainty in the back and forth. But to have that to offset those projected budget overruns [and] expenditures that we’re going to have to look at reducing would go a long way.”
Relations between Alaska and federal departments were already strained when news came out that the Alaska Department of Transportation would receive its lowest August redistribution of federal dollars in two decades and the lowest redistribution of any state in the union. Now, Holland says the school district is hearing something similar about the state’s fight with the fed over the proper distribution of American Rescue Plan Act funds for education in Alaska.
“We are hearing that we are the only state in the entire union that’s not taking care of this,” he said.
Needless to say, this places strain on what should be a mutually supportive relationship between the state Department of Education and school districts like the KPBSD. “To add this on top of it is very frustrating,” said Holland. “But we just keep working with DEED, and I would hope that they would look at, ‘Okay, how can we support our districts rather than continue to fight the federal government on this issue?'”
“They’re dug in to such an extent that really it’s almost like we’re going to, you know, cut our nose off to spite our face,” Holland added.
For the Superintendent and the rest of the school district, this type of inconsistency from the state regarding education funding is wreaking havoc on annual budgets. Last year, the KPBSD didn’t even learn exactly what its funding from the state would be until days before the fiscal year turnover after the Alaska Legislature approved $175 million in one-time funding for schools.
“We have no idea what our budget is, right?” said Holland. “That’s the annual thing up here in Alaska that you get a budget literally two days before the start of the next fiscal year and you’re supposed to have it all figured out. So, this kind of fits in with that pattern in my mind.”
Other districts that are owed funding include the Anchorage School District and the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District. An appeal must be submitted by mid-October by DEED or the federal government’s decision to withhold the $17.5 million will be made final.
