Four Kenai Peninsula schools will close their doors this summer, while others face cuts to librarians, pool facilities, and various extracurriculars. That’s after school board members approved the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District’s spending plan Monday night. The board says the budget could still change. But it’s what will be implemented unless the district gets more money.
One person described Monday’s meeting as “a bit of a funeral.” Another compared it to “watching a train wreck.” And the school board president summed up the budget as “a horror show.” The meeting has loomed large since the district first forecasted an $8.5 million budget gap if it wanted to implement status quo staffing and programs next year.
Multiple school board members say the budget represents the district’s most conservative approach to budgeting. It assumes the district will get less from the state and borough than it did last year. Member Mica VanBuskirk, who represents the eastern Kenai Peninsula, called the budget cuts heartbreaking.
“I will vote for this, but I will also stay laser focused on every penny that comes back, being put first to PTR and programmatic staffing, and then to save our libraries, because those – our libraries and library aids are core functions of education, and we have to, have to, have them back,” she said.
School closures
On the agenda was the fate of four schools. None of the board votes were unanimous, but all were successful. This school year will be the last for Sterling Elementary School, Seward Middle School, Tustumena Elementary School and River City Academy. The district estimates it will save almost $2 million the first year after closing the schools.
Most of the pushback Monday came from the Sterling and Tustumena communities.
Amanda Kimbrell was one of many to defend Sterling Elementary School’s tightknit, “Falcon Strong” community, with the building at the center of town.
“Our kids and our family and our staff show up year after year,” she said. “And our community, it's rural and small, but it's not less deserving of a neighborhood school.”
Cat Cramer is the parent of a fifth grader at Sterling Elementary. She says she’s nervous about her daughter riding the bus an hour each way to Soldotna and that her family has been weighing a tough choice if their neighborhood school closes.
“We're going to move,” she said. “And not around here, because this district isn't, you know, supporting students in the way that I support. We've got family down in good districts in the states, and so you guys are going to lose families.”
Supporters of Tustumena Elementary came out in equally strong force. But on top of love for the Kasilof school and its community were concerns about how losing special education services would impact students in the area.
That’s what Rachel Farley is worried about for her children. She says closing Tustumena means she’ll have to drive to Soldotna for speech, physical and occupational therapy appointments that her child would otherwise have at school.
“This is just a vote for you, but you are making lives harder for the most vulnerable of our community,” Farley said.
If Tustumena closes, Farley said, she will pursue legal action against the district under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. That’s a federal law that ensures free, appropriate public education to students with disabilities.
“When I sit and think about what my son has accomplished in his classroom at Tustumena, I'm enraged at the thought that you can just take this all away from him,” she said.
It wasn’t just parents who spoke out in favor of schools.
Brayden Barber is a freshman at River City Academy, which he says often acts as a bridge for students from charter and home-school backgrounds preparing to attend large high schools.
“Removing this transition could possibly make it harder for students to succeed,” Barber said.
General budget
School closures are only one piece of the spending plan board members passed Monday. And it’s a slight change from the budget draft board members were working with last month. The board built three scenarios around different levels of funding from the Kenai Peninsula Borough. The version adopted Monday implements $11.5 million dollars worth of cuts.
That includes cutting all staff for the district’s distance education program. It allows students in some of the district’s most far-flung locations to participate in classes not offered at their local school. Loana Benton asked the board to reconsider cuts to the program. Benton is the principal of the K-12 Port Graham School on the southern side of Kachemak Bay. She says cuts to the program limit academic opportunities for rural students.
“Distance Learning isn't a frill,” Benton said. “It's a high impact, cost effective investment that directly supports student success, equity and sustainability in rural schools. We cannot afford to take this access and support effort away from our students, because without it, students will lose opportunities that we will not be able to give back.”
McNeil Canyon Elementary School parent and alum Colette Choate testified in support of school libraries. The board approved eliminating all librarian and library aide positions across the district, including those at McNeil Canyon. The district has previously said this doesn’t mean school libraries will totally close, but library staff say the reductions will have that effect.
“If we are serious about improving literacy outcomes, then we must pay attention to environments where those outcomes are already strong,” Choate said. “What's happening is connection. It's a student who finally finds a book they love. It's a reluctant reader who becomes a regular visitor. It's a school culture where reading is not just a requirement, it's a joy.”
Next steps
Now that the school board has passed the district’s budget, the spending plan heads to the Kenai Peninsula Borough. Assembly members still haven’t decided how much money the borough should give the district. Board members are hoping to get more money than they budgeted around, which would allow them to undo some of the cuts implemented Monday.
Borough Mayor Peter Micciche has said he favors a 2.5% increase over what he proposed last year. The bump is intended to mirror inflation. And during a town hall event last week, he said specifically the borough will not give the district the maximum funding allowable under state law.
The board was split on, but narrowly passed on a 5-4 vote, a resolution outlining which budget cuts could be reversed if the school district gets more money from the borough. The resolution is being sent to borough assembly members along with the passed budget.
Board Vice President Tim Daugharty, who represents Homer, strongly opposed the resolution, which he says sells kids short by asking assembly members for less money than the district could actually use. The amount requested is higher than what the borough has said it will provide, but less than the maximum it could provide under state law. That’s also called the cap.
“I just know and totally believe that there's more out there, and we're selling ourselves short a little bit, and I couldn't do that as an educator to to sell a kid short for politics or whatever else,” he said.
School Board Finance Chair Sarah Douthit says the resolution is an attempt to secure more money for the district in a responsible way.
“It was a tremendous deal last year to get funding all the way to the cap, and I certainly am not going to have an unrealistic expectation that we can get funding to the max from the borough again when we have risk, when the borough has been saddled with this huge cost shift,” she said.
Tauriainen, the board president, was one of multiple board members to acknowledge that more changes could be on the horizon as the funding levels from the borough and state come into focus.
“I hate this budget, but I have some excitement over it, because I want to get this over the finish line so we can start advocating for proper funding from the state and the borough, so we can fix a lot of this,” he said. “This is the beginning. It's not the end.”
Tauriainen and Superintendent Clayton Holland were scheduled to meet with assembly members Tuesday to talk through the district’s budget and finances. The assembly has until the end of June to pass its own balanced spending plan for the borough.
