The board tearfully and unanimously voted to close both Fawn Mountain and Point Higgins Elementary Schools at the end of this school year. The decision is one that’s been looming for years — the board restructured the district’s elementary schools last year in an effort to save money. Ultimately, it wasn’t enough.
Now, with a 3-year plan to pay back over a $5 million debt to the borough, and the state having previously threatened to withhold funds until the board balances their budget, the financial constraints have seemingly come to a head.
Several districts across the state have recently considered consolidating schools or shutting doors in an attempt to meet constricting budgets. Board member Jordan Tabb said that’s not a coincidence.
“It’s almost like every district in the state of Alaska does not have the funds they need to run the district to support their students,” he said. “So you may look at what’s happening here in Ketchikan and say, ‘Wow, Ketchikan isn’t managing its money well.’ We will take the blame where it’s due, but every educator and every administrator in the state has a choker around their neck in the form of limited state funding.”
Tabb said without changes at the state level, he thinks they’ll be in a similar position next year.
“We can’t charge tuition, we can’t run bake sales, we can’t go to the borough, and whether they’d like to give us more money or not, they can’t,” Tabb said. “So we’re sitting here season after season and year after year, having less and less to take care of our children, and watching a cascade of failures occur.”
The decision to close the schools was pushed back from late last month, when the board directed district staff to come up with a comprehensive school closure plan — one that includes where kids from Fawn Mountain and Point Higgins will go, and how they will get there.
That plan includes centrally-located schools they call “learning hubs,” and all K-5 students from the closing schools will attend Houghtaling Elementary, instead. It also includes a reconfiguration, with Schoenbar Middle School adding an additional grade and becoming a 6-8 model. Previously, the three district elementary schools were grades K-6 and Schoenbar was grades 7-8.
The vote to close schools came after nearly four hours of back-and-forth discussion over how to balance next year’s budget, and what positions could be cut from where.
Acting business manager Lisa Pearce said the budget presented Wednesday night was balanced, but irresponsible.
“I understand that it’s important to put people in front of classrooms, but you got to keep the lights on,” Pearce said. “This budget does not have that. It’s a balanced budget at the cost of the basic infrastructure pieces that are required to keep this school district running.”
Pearce said there were budget items that could work in an ideal world, but she said it’s not a good idea to operate on those aspirations. Realistically, she said, the budget was likely about $1.2 million short. She said there wasn’t enough money set aside in the budget presented for non-personnel costs like utilities and transportation. There’s also no buffer for contract negotiations.
She urged the board to think about other ways to cut back, like moving to a 7 class period day the high school.
There was ample discussion Wednesday on whether the district should reserve money for important positions that have routinely gone unfilled, like multiple school counselors or a curriculum director. Most board members agreed to axe the curriculum director position from the budget.
“In three years, we’ll hopefully be done paying this debt to the borough and could afford to add a curriculum director,” board member Ali Ginter said. “At this point, we can’t even afford curriculum.”
Interim Superintendent Sheri Boehlert said central office and administrative staff are already stretched thin, and some positions that could get removed from the draft budget are crucial. She said she knows the board seemed to have a consensus that they’ve been fine without a curriculum director, but that shouldn’t be the status quo.
“If we had a curriculum director, they would be guiding us right now on, ‘these are the programs we need to maintain because these are the ways curriculum pathways go through schools,” she said.
Boehlert also said after she finishes her contract as Interim Superintendent, she will not return to her previous position as principal of Schoenbar.
One thing all board members seem to agree on: it’s unreasonable to cut staff from Revilla Junior and Senior High School, the district’s only alternative school. The budget presented Wednesday would cut staff, despite the school gaining an additional grade in the next year.
The board unanimously voted to reject the budget in first reading. They directed district staff to fix the budget as presented to save an additional $1.2 million.
The school board will meet in a special meeting this Friday, and again for a regular meeting on the 15th. They need to approve the district budget by the end of the month in order to present it to the borough.
