When the Kenai Peninsula Borough School Board meets in July, it’s usually to finalize its budget for the new fiscal year. This year, however, it will be recalculating yet again, to absorb the $1.1 million in funding cuts announced by Gov. Bill Walker at the end of June.
Among the vetoes Gov. Bill Walker announced June 29 are $58.3 million in cuts to education. What will that mean for the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District?
“Well, that’s an interesting question,” said Assistant Superintendent Dave Jones.
The arithmetic of the cuts is easy to figure. Walker vetoed $4.7 million in one-time funds the Legislature decided to award at the end of its last special session. Jones says that cut doesn’t hurt too much.
“We’re losing $331,000 but we hadn’t had the opportunity to make commitments with it. In the end, yeah, that’s money we could use, but we didn’t have plans for it,” Jones said.
The other cuts will be felt. With a $4.1 billion budget shortfall due to declining oil prices, Gov. Walker tasked the Legislature with restructuring the state’s finances to make them more sustainable. He also asked legislators to make difficult cuts during an election year, something they apparently were not able to do to his satisfaction. As a result, Walker made his own cuts across the budget.
In education, he sliced about $6.4 million in the per-pupil funding formula and another $6.4 million in transportation funding for public schools. Assistant Superintendent Jones says it was more than the district anticipated.
“We took a bigger reduction in the transportation side than we would have if it was all taken from the K-12 foundation,” Jones said. “We’re going to lose $655,000 through transportation and $444,000 through K-12 foundation funding. So that’s about $1,990,000 that we had planned on receiving.”
The district has already allocated that money.
“We understand the economics of the state and where the state is at, but we received those cuts on the 29th of June and the fiscal year starts the first (of July), and, so, for planning purposes, the lateness of those cuts is not good,” Jones said.
The Kenai Peninsula Borough also provides education funding, but Jones said he doesn’t yet know how the governor’s veto might affect local funding. Perhaps the borough assembly will decide to increase school funding to offset the cuts, but the governor scribbled some red ink on the borough’s budget, as well, with a reduction in debt reimbursement.
The amount boroughs contribute to their school district is linked to how much the state spends on education, with a cap on the upper level of local spending. The governor reduced a funding increase the Legislature had approved, and Jones says he doesn’t know how that will affect the cap on local funding.
“That’s an interesting question. The governor, in his cuts, didn’t change the amount, he reduced the funding. And, so, technically, I’m not sure, and that’s some of this stuff we’re trying to look at and see. I’m not sure if the cap decreased or stayed the same or how that kind of veto affects the cap,” Jones said.
Jones says the district was already planning on using some of its savings to balance the fiscal year 2017 budget. Now it will have to drain that well much deeper, just about $2 million.
Unless the Legislature takes action to restore education funding.
“That’s an interesting question, too. As I understand, it takes a three-quarter vote [to override the governor’s veto]. What’s been fairly surprising to me is I haven’t heard reactions from legislators saying we need to override that or not. I really don’t have a feeling if they’re going to attempt it or if they have votes to do it,” Jones said.
The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District is the fourth largest in the state, after Anchorage, Fairbanks and Matanuska-Susitna. It covers a huge geographical area, more than 25,000 square miles. It serves about 9,000 students at 44 sites and is the largest employer in the borough. The Legislature returns to Juneau to start its next special session July 11.