Kenai Peninsula Borough School District administration met with residents at Kenai Central High School to discuss the nearly $145 million preliminary budget for the school year beginning in August, as well as to address concerns from the public.
Liz Hayes, Director of Finance for KBPSD, and Dave Jones, Assistant Superintendent of Instructional Support, held their presentation in the school’s library, the second of four such meetings they are conducting throughout the peninsula. They walked the crowd of around 20 residents through a PowerPoint presentation, followed by a lengthy question-and-answer session.
The two highlighted budget cuts since the 2015 fiscal year, with a total reduction of $11,091,048 in that time frame. Mr. Jones mentioned that the cuts are due to a five-year list of cuts that the district is sticking to. He said he hopes the government in Juneau adheres to their responsibility to find new funding, pointing out that the district is having a difficult time with the budget cuts.
Dave Jones: “At the state level, where have we been and where are we going? A year ago, we were talking about the Governor’s budget cutting $20 million to this school district. It wasn’t realistic for us to make those cuts and still provide an education. Luckily, those cuts didn’t come all the way through. To sit here this year and feel that $2.2 million dollars – life is good! – but the future says that we need to no tbe flat-funded, or else we’ll be looking at cuts again because of salary increases, inflation on fuel, and those sorts of things. After five years, we have to realize that a base-student-allocation increase is necessary.”
The conversation turned briefly to Governor Dunleavy’s proposed lottery, with the funds going to education. Mr. Jones said, “A lottery would not introduce very much money. It’s not a substantial amount of money,” though he mentioned the Permanent Fund Dividend raffle giving the district an additional $33,000 this year.
In concluding the talk of a need for increased funding, the pair made a point to provide contact information for local legislators, to encourage residents to make phone calls if they want to see changes, saying, “We need you to say ‘we want to fund schools and we’re willing to pay for it!'”
The next meeting will be Thursday in the Soldotna High School library at 6 p.m., and the final meeting will be Tuesday, February 25, in the Seward High School library at 6 p.m.
