As rising fears over insufficient education funding in 2024 continue prompting red pen crosshairs to zero in on likely budget cuts, several high school students attended last week’s Board of Education meeting to speak in defense of two programs they do not want to see cast aside: pools and theaters.
Budgetary concerns got a bump in the wake of high costs associated with pools and theaters during the Nov. 28 KPBSD school board Finance Committee meeting. At that time, Board President Zen Kelly pointed out that highlighting these particular programs and facilities was “merely informational,” and not preemptively paving the road for them to be eventually cut. Nevertheless, the mention of pools and theaters in conjunction with budget concerns has sparked fears amongst the community over potentially seeing programs they love on the chopping block.
In response, a handful of Soldotna High School students lined up at the podium to voice their support of district pool and theater extracurriculars, and admonish school board members to do what was necessary to avoid cutting them.
“The student success goes beyond the core classes and the STEM classes. It’s not just math and reading and science. I wouldn’t be here if we didn’t have a theater program, if we didn’t have a music program. Those saved my life,” said Jennifer Webster, a senior at SOHI. “I said I [am happy] knowing that I’m leaving the music program and the theater program in great hands. Well, I can’t leave them in any hands if we don’t have a theater music program or music program.”
Webster, as well as other students who shared at the meeting, participated in the recent production of The Wizard of Oz, which received multiple mentions as an example of the benefit extracurriculars have in the community.
Several of the students are a part of a committee at SOHI, known as Students First, which was formed with the intent of raising funds for pools and theaters in the school district. Charisma Watkins, who facilitated the committee’s formation, said she and her classmates have begun polling other students on what those facilities mean to them.
“One of my favorite answers was that someone said that these extracurriculars are a literal life changer,” said Watkins. “They also said how much they enjoyed the family atmosphere of sports and just their theaters in general.”
“I don’t know if you guys have been in classes lately,” said Caitlin Babcock, “but there’s already 30 students in each class and that’s a big amount of kids for one teacher to handle, and having more kids just put in those classes is going not is going to disrupt our learning environment. Not only that, we also have a number of successful people in [these] programs. Abriella Warner has gotten first in State for Diving and Charisma, who just spoke, got fourth in state for the 200 IM and 100 butterfly, not to mention the breathtaking performance of the Wizard of Oz.”
Beyond poignant petitions, the appeals also cited language specific to the upcoming legislative budget discussions.
“As you go into looking at legislative priorities for the upcoming year, I would encourage you to look beyond BSA increase and potentially look at different ways to get more funding for school districts beyond just the base student allocation,” said Enoch Fredrickson, a homeschool student who also swims for SOHI. “And to also look at ways within our own borough and within our own school district that we can more efficiently spend our money and reduce unnecessary spending so we don’t have to get rid of programs.”
Soldotna High Student Body President, Jeren Nash, summed up his classmates petitions by putting the onus of preserving pool and theater programs back on the district by citing the district’s own mission statement. “I believe your mission statement is supporting students and life success … It represents our promise to provide academic excellence [by] investing in school programs like swimming pools and theatres, as well as providing salaries for staff is an essential step towards addressing that.”
Nash finished by adding succinctly, “I believe that as a community, if we if we advocate for these programs, we can make a difference.”
Currently, the KPBSD is sitting at a $13 million deficit for the next budgeting year. The district is not alone in this, however, and like many others around the state, it is requesting an increase to its base student allocation (BSA)—the money allotted for each district per student enrolled in its schools.
The next legislative session–beginning in January–will serve as the hotbed for fleshing out exactly what the state ends up doing to address the issue of educations shortfalls.
During a recent chamber of commerce luncheon, District 7 Rep. Justin Ruffridge, who co-Chairs the House Education Committee, said he foresees a real fight coming over budget deficits in school districts across the state.
Aside from a $30 increase approved during the most recent legislative session, the last time the state bumped up the education budget’s BSA was in 2017. A bill currently in the house seeks to increase the BSA for districts in the state by $680, which would represent at least an additional $5 million or more for the KPBSD.
