The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District has seen increasing interest in their public work sessions to help community members understand the budget process they are currently working through.
At the Soldotna work session in SoHi’s library Wednesday night, Assistant Superintendent Dave Jones spent much of the time going over how the funding from the state is decided.
Jones: “I liked the feedback and the questions that we heard because it showed that we have parents and a public that are paying attention to the fiscal situation that we’re in and they’re looking for ways to assist and find solutions to that.”
Jones says right now the District is watching what happens in the legislature with the governor’s proposed state operating budget. He encouraged parents and “real people” to contact their legislators because those connections “are worth 50 times” what a paid representative like himself says.
Eva Knutson is a parent as well as serves on the Academic Policy Committee at the Soldotna Montessori Charter School. She says Wednesday’s meeting offered more details on the same information and she plans to contact legislators with ideas.
Knutson: “You wonder how to articulate it and what to say. Ultimately I always just use personal experience and kind of an emotional plea and fold that into, considering what they’re considering with sales tax or the permanent fund, fold it into ‘I’m willing to make these sacrifices for education’.”
Another parent at the meeting said she came to show District administrators the amount of paper that her kindergartner was sent home with just this week, suggesting they could cut costs with digital memos.
Jones says the amount of paper she showed him was about the equivalent of a ream of paper and he will be looking into that issue.