The Sitka School Board is looking for your help to figure out its 2013 budget.

The board will hold a public hearing on its operating budget at 7 p.m. today at Keet Gooshi Heen Elementary School. Like last year, the district has to make up a deficit before mid-March, when the budget is submitted to the city.

“If we were to just roll forward our entire budget, and not dip into our reserves, not do anything else other than what we are doing today, we have a $1.2 million deficit,” said Lon Garrison, president of the school board.

Click here for detailed information on the budget, as well as a summary of comments made by district staff at an earlier meeting.

The school board has already said it will move $500,000 out of its reserve account. That will help narrow the gap to $700,000.

“That $700,000 has to be made up somewhere. Is it going to be made up in federal funding?” Garrison said. “Well, we’re not accounting for any more Secure Rural Schools in our budget. Last year we had it in our budget because we knew it was going to come through. This year, it’s up for reauthorization. We can’t count on it. We have to be more conservative.”

Secure Rural Schools refers to a federal law that gives money to cities and school districts near national forests, where a large percentage of the land has been taken off the tax rolls.

Garrison spoke to KCAW from Washington, D.C., where he was attending the National Association of School Boards Conference. He said he spent some time on Capitol Hill, talking with Alaska’s U.S. Senators about the law, and the crucial funding he says it provides to the region’s schools.

U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski is sponsoring a bill to reauthorize the act, but it’s not a sure thing. Garrison says speaking with her, and with Senator Mark Begich, isn’t about putting the issue on their radar so much as keeping it there.

“It does seem like, well, why are you talking to these guys, because they’re already in your corner,” he said. “I think what we have to do is go and reinforce why it’s so important, so that they remain a staunch advocate for your position. That’s what we were trying to do with both senators.”

And Garrison says just as it’s important for local voices to be heard on the national level, it’s also important that community voices talk to the board about how to best close the district’s budget gap.

“If nobody’s speaking up (on Capitol Hill), then they would think ‘Well, who cares? We’ll just do what we want, and we’ll do what seems to work, and look out for our own interests.’ I don’t think that’s the way our democracy works. You need to participate,” Garrison said. “That’s why I think it’s especially important that the folks in the city of Sitka help participate in our budget hearings and give us some input on what they think about our budget and where it needs to go. We try to be as transparent as we possibly can and be advocates for education.”