The Anchorage School Board will vote Feb. 25 on a budget proposal that makes significant cuts that will impact every student in the state’s largest school district.
The board has heard nearly six hours of testimony on the cuts in the last three weeks, causing some parents to question whether it's worth it to keep their student enrolled in the district. The school board will hear more public testimony and vote on the budget on Feb. 25.
On Tuesday, 98 people pleaded with the school board not to cut programs that benefit them or their children.
Zaylee Mullinax is a sophomore on the swim team at Dimond High School. She told the board school swim teams help students learn a life skill available at a low cost compared to club teams.
“Swimming boosts cognitive abilities and brain health, which leads to an improvement in school as well,” Mullinax said. “Swimming also creates many job opportunities we can put on our college resumes like lifeguarding and teaching swim lessons, and many of the Dimond swim and dive athletes from this last season are teaching swim lessons at Swim America where an average of 240 kids a week are taught a lifesaving skill.”
Testifiers included high school swimmers, gymnasts, students in French and German immersion programs, students in gifted programs, school nurses and advocates for the Alaska State School for Deaf and Hard of Hearing, among many others.
The current budget proposal would eliminate all middle school sports, high school gymnastics, swimming and hockey, the IGNITE program for gifted students, as well as many nurses, counselors, and staff for language immersion programs across the district. It also increases the student teacher ratio by four across all grades. The budget cuts over 200 teaching positions along with spending the district’s reserve funding down to the lowest amount permissible by state statute.
Dozens of people responded to an Alaska Public Media request for input about the proposed cuts. Almost all opposed the budget cuts and argued that their children’s education would be negatively impacted by eliminating special programs and sports.
Christina McDonogh and her husband James Johnston have children in preschool, elementary school, and middle school. She said her family is considering moving out of state because of the proposed cuts.
“We love Anchorage. We're so proud of where our kids are and what we put together for them, but we cannot stay in this city if our children's education continues to be attacked, it's not an option,” McDonogh said.
Christina’s husband James Johnston came to the United States from Ireland. He credits the IGNITE program that would be cut with increasing their oldest child’s engagement in class.
“I was blown away when I first got here and I seen what my kids have available to them after school as part of their education,” Johnston said. “I can see from both sides, and it doesn't make sense to cut that stuff.”
The school board is required to submit a balanced budget to the Anchorage Assembly by the first Monday in March, but board members still don’t know what level of funding they’ll receive from the state for next year.
Lawmakers and Gov. Mike Dunleavy both support a boost to state funding for education. But so far, they haven't reached a compromise that could pass the House and Senate and be signed into law. Dunleavy prefers an omnibus bill including policy changes alongside funding increases, but majority-caucus lawmakers in both chambers say they prefer to move a funding bill sooner and address reforms later.
At a recent meeting, Anchorage School District Chief Financial Officer Andy Ratliff said last year, district officials did not know how much money the state would provide until the end of June.
“We took cuts to pretty much every area to get this to balance and frankly it’s going to be difficult to implement,” Ratliff said. “You can tell the percentage of the total is about the same across the board, so we did take a good look at every department, every line item to see what reductions we could possibly make.”
Janet Linnell is a former Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District educator who drives her child to school so they can attend one of the district’s IGNITE programs for gifted learners. She said the special programs that would be cut are what make children love school.
“My reaction to the news is just sort of rolling my eyes, thinking of course this is happening. This is how Alaska values education,” Linnell said. “When they delete schools and delete teachers from staff and increase class sizes, it takes the magic of and the art and the love out of your classroom.”
District officials may be able to reinstate some programs if the legislature passes a funding increase, but fear that laid off staff may not return without long-term budget stability.
