Budget woes reach school district

PALMER — Superintendent Monica Goyette delivered her presentation of the FY 2019 preliminary budget for MSBSD on Thursday, Feb 15 at the district office. The presentation was seen live by 31 viewers at its peak and has since been viewed more than 2,000 times. Dr. Goyette detailed the expenses and revenues of the district, and answered some previously submitted questions.

The Facebook Live event was the last of a string of budget open houses designed to create more involvement in our budget process, according to Goyette. Because the district must present a balanced budget to the Borough, they still have to make $7 million in cuts to the currently proposed $234.1 million budget. Goyette detailed the revenues of the district that come almost entirely from the State and Borough. Three quarters of the revenues comes from State funding and one quarter from the Borough. The district also credits 1% of the incomes to Federal funding.

MSBSD is allotted about $2,900 for each of the 18,968 students. MSBSD is funded at about 77% of the maximum allowable funding from the State, compared to 99% to Anchorage and 98% to Juneau. Goyette says she would like to reach the 84% mark that the Fairbanks School District is at.

“An education in the Mat Su Borough should be worth as much to our community as an education in the other districts,” said Goyette.

The MSBSD spends 83% of it’s expenses on personnel paying it’s employees. Teachers have made a statement by showing up to MSBSD School Board meetings holding signs that say “Hands Off My Healthcare,” but Goyette says that healthcare is the 2nd largest cost driver for the district at $36.2 million. MSBSD pays about $22,000 per member for health care, which is above the average. Teachers had taken issue with the School District bargaining for greater access to insurance information. Goyette claimed it was a misunderstanding, and that the district already deals with sensitive health care information, but that the district wanted to see the costs of cumulative care and prescriptions in an effort to see what costs could be cut.

“What we are really looking for is global aggregate data, how much does the district spend on prescriptions as a lump some, not individually,” said Goyette.

Goyette said the district is currently looking at a number of options including self insurance and pooling.

“One of the things we are really working hard on is being able to find out if there are other methods of making sure that we have high value plans for our employees but that could be at a savings rate to both our employees and the school district,” said Goyette.

Goyette repeatedly stressed her excitement for the Independent Financial Review, hoping it would “find efficiencies as we continue to have declining revenue.”

Goyette also repeatedly stressed the involvement of parents in communicating with their legislators the importance of education funding. Both the House and Senate have bills designed to fund education early so that teachers do not get pink slipped at the end of the year due to lack of funding. The Borough offers flat funding to the District where the State uses a different formula. Goyette stressed the difficulty in retaining teachers when there is uncertainty on what funding will be from the borough and state. The borough’s funding comes out in May and the State legislature is supposed to offer funding in June, but has run long with special sessions in recent years.

Of the $234.1 Million in expenses the District spends, only 1% of that, or $3.4 Million is spent on student activities, which covers sports, music, and all before and after school programs that are not qualified as instruction. MSBSD spends 76% on instruction. The state requires 70. MSBSD had over $4 million allocated for student activities last year, but cut costs and shifted those to the parents. Discussions on what programs to cut quickly became divisive.

“Kids are going to be busy. Whether or or they are busy in meaningful activities that our community helps structure and are important to them, or whether or not they are making their own activities, we think it’s better for them to be involved in positive structured activities,” said Goyette.

MSBSD features 47 schools to go along with the District office, warehouse, and nutrition services. Goyette reiterated the importance of the diversity of the District as one of the reasons for high expense.

Goyette’s long term forecast saw a rise of expenses far over revenues. With a 7 million dollar deficit in FY2019 that will grow to 13 million in 2020, 18 in 2021, and 23 million in 2022, according to projections. Goyette said that the deficit will likely result in more students per classroom.

“We are very concerned about this fiscal forecast,” said Goyette.