Dozens of parents, students and staff gave emotional testimony at the Anchorage School Board meeting on Tuesday night after the district released a draft budget last week that makes significant cuts to programs and activities.
The budget would eliminate four positions from the Alaska School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
Several parents, staff, and a student described the cuts as dire. They spoke to the board through interpreters, asking for American Sign Language-fluent staff to remain at the school.
Pepper Draper is an 11-year-old sixth-grader at the school. She started attending the school two years ago, and commutes every day from Wasilla to learn from teachers who speak American Sign Language. Draper said she never interacted with adults using sign language before she enrolled.
“I’m able to be a part of deaf culture and work on my deaf identity and I very much cherish my school and the program and working with my counselors and please keep our staff and counselors,” Draper said.
Facing a deficit of $111 million, the draft budget would cut all middle school sports, three high school sports (hockey, gymnastics and swimming and diving) and the IGNITE program for gifted students. It also increase the pupil-to-teacher ratio by four for every grade level. The budget calls for 200 teaching positions to be cut, as well as over a dozen nurses and librarians from elementary schools.
Jennifer Phillips has worked for the district for over two decades, and asked the board not to cut the IGNITE program for gifted elementary and middle school students. Phillips said gifted students can lose interest in a class if they are not being challenged by the curriculum.
“In the IGNITE classroom students are given multiple chances and challenges in which they may fail or hit the wall and with the guidance of their teacher they can learn strategies to move through these complex problems,” Phillips said.
ASD Chief Financial Officer Andy Ratliff said the district has about $43 million less in revenue for next school year’s budget than they had this year.
“We’ve been reducing from everywhere,” Ratliff said. “There wasn't a whole lot of places that were held harmless in this budget, we were just kind of finding as much things as we possibly could before we got to a PTR (pupil-teacher ratio) increase.”
The budget calls for a draw of nearly $50 million from the district’s savings account, and assumes no increase in the Base Student Allocation, the state’s per-student funding formula. However, lawmakers have said they’re prioritizing a measure to stabilize education funding this session. Negotiations between members of the House, Senate, and Governor’s Office began Tuesday.
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