The Sitka School District is in the usual budget bind as it plans its finances for next year – with an unusual twist. Thanks to a pair of recent ballot measures there is significantly more local money available to spend on schools, but no mechanism to apply it where it’s most needed – in the classroom.
The Sitka Assembly and Sitka School Board put their heads together during a joint work session in January (1-18-24) to try and find a way to supplement the school budget, without jeopardizing the community’s share of state education funding.
This is the weirdest budget cycle for the Sitka School District in recent memory, but it’s not really unique to Sitka.
There are other communities awash in excess sales tax revenue from the rebound in cruise tourism – like Juneau – which want to support schools, because they feel the state has throttled education funding by failing to raise the BSA. That’s the base student allocation, or the amount of per-pupil funding for public schools.
This is Sitka School Board president Tristan Guevin’s frequent line of attack.
“I’ve mentioned this to you before that the base student allocation has only been increased $30 Since July 1, 2016,” Guevin said. “In that same timeframe, we’ve had almost 30-percent inflation. So that has had a huge impact on our district. You’ve seen the loss of positions like the Blatchley librarian, Science Enrichment at Keet Gooshi Heen (Elementary), and a number of other thing. It’s been these kind of small cuts over time, you know, death by a million cuts.”
Fairly well-off communities like Sitka have made up some of the difference by contributing money “outside the cap,” or above-and-beyond what state law allows municipalities to contribute to education. Outside-the-cap spending in Sitka in recent years has helped pay for student travel, the Community Schools program, and utility costs at the Blatchley swimming pool and the Performing Arts Center.
Last year, however, the state signaled that it was going to start cracking down on outside-the-cap spending, which would force Sitka’s schools and other districts to absorb these costs, count them towards the cap, leaving less money for teaching.
Sitka assembly member Thor Christianson has children in school, and shared his dismay over the state’s crackdown.
“And I find it incredibly frustrating that not only are they not wanting to pay for the schools, but they’re not wanting to let us do it either,” Christianson said.
Christianson is far from alone in his opinion. Sitka voters in 2022 passed an additional 6-percent sales tax on marijuana to support school activities (which increases to 8-percent this year) which brings in an estimated $300,000. And last year they passed a 1-percent sales tax increase during the summer months to support maintenance and replacement of school infrastructure. The annual revenue could land around $2 million.
Neither vote was close. Mayor Steven Eisenbeisz said Sitkans were sending a message.
“The community has really stepped up in order to fund the schools,” Eisenbeisz said. “To get two tax increases passed is pretty much unheard of in this community. In the last 20 years, I think it’s probably the only two that we’ve ever done on ourselves.”
The solution to this problem has already emerged out of necessity. Last year the city established a Parks & Recreation office to take over the functions of Community Schools. Now, the conversation is on school maintenance: The buildings all belong to the city, why not transfer the district’s maintenance department into municipal government? The net savings would be almost half-a-million dollars for schools, which could then apply it toward instruction.
“It will save basically, if we go this direction, if we can get it pulled off, we’ll save three to four teaching positions, I believe,” said interim superintendent Steve Bradshaw, who offered no resistance whatsoever to the plan. In fact, when assembly member J.J. Carlson asked if there were plans to transfer the swimming pool to the city, Bradshaw did not hesitate.
“You can have it today, if you’d like,” Bradshaw quipped, prompting laughter around the table.
No action was taken at the work session, but assembly members agreed to give the school maintenance takeover serious consideration. The school board will resume its budget work at its next regular meeting on February 7, but the question of maintenance could be eclipsed by a presentation from the committee exploring the renaming of Baranof Elementary School.
