CHALK TALK:Mat-Su School Budget

Once again, teachers are waiting to hear about school funding for the next school year, and I find myself wondering if our community understands what that means for their children’s teachers and schools, and how it might affect students. Really, it is the perfect environment for a classic good news, bad news story.

The process starts when the Matanuska Susitna Borough School District (MSBSD) submits a budget. There is a complex formula called the state foundation formula which is used to determine the amount of funding each school district in our state can request. In the pie chart of funding, 74% comes from the state of Alaska, 1% from the federal Government, and 25% from the Mat-Su Borough.

Questions in play

Without new sources of revenue, will the borough be able to adequately fund the budget?

Will the borough fund the maximum allowable, or remain at less than 80%?

Will state lawmakers agree to raise base student allocation?

Will they pass the budget in 90 days?

Will they pass the budget before the end of the school year?

If all goes smoothly, funding can be decided by the first of April. If it doesn’t, we begin to travel through the good news, bad news adventure.

There is the bad news meeting. It is the doom and gloom, worst-case scenario meeting where principals find out how many teachers they may need to cut in order to open their doors in the fall if the borough and state budgets don’t include full funding for education. Principals, especially experienced ones, know this will happen. Unfortunately, they expect to have this meeting every year. The next step is that principals have to approach each teacher on the staff who may be affected by the cuts.

The news is delivered carefully, and the teacher is told to take it with a grain of salt, because the good news is that it probably won’t happen. But the principal knows the bad news; that it COULD happen. Teachers are encouraged to be on the lookout for other opportunities within the district or around the state that may be a good fit for them.

The principal has been working with this teacher and the rest of the staff all year. In many elementary schools students and teachers “loop” from grades K-1, 2-3, 4-5. This arrangement is especially successful, because teachers, students, and families work together for two full years. (Great news!) The teachers work in teams, so they can support students and group them according to the strengths of the teachers and students. This extra time means more meaningful relationships, more individual attention, and more communication between parents, students, and teachers. Even if the school doesn’t do looping, many parents request teachers who they think will be a good fit for their children. Announcing that one or more of the teachers in a school may not return the next year undermines the stability within a building. That is bad news for the whole school community.

But, good news! There is a relatively clear system for deciding which teachers will receive notice. Seniority within the district. This means that any number of teachers in a building may be put on notice, and teachers in other schools with slightly more seniority may be notified that they might be involuntarily transferred to fill those newly vacated positions.

A teacher who has less seniority may find that, while he is a valuable part of the staff, and his evaluation was exemplary (yay!) he may not have a position at the school the next year (boo!). He can be assured that--good news-- this is just the worst case scenario, and not even necessarily a probability. The bad news is that there is no guarantee, so if he has a family to support, he may not be able to wait and see. When a position at another school is posted, he needs to apply.

Good news! Even though these interviews are held during the school day, usually principals will allow leave so the teacher can attend. Unfortunately, the bad news is that the teacher will need to miss some time in his classroom, so that he can interview for a position that he may not want or need.

The good news for the teacher is that he is qualified to teach any grade from kindergarten to 5th grade. The bad news is that there is no guarantee or even likelihood of being put into the same grade level; teaching kindergarten and teaching 5th grade are very different experiences.

Questions still in play:

Will the education budget be fully funded and his job be saved?

Is the person leaving the other job higher or lower in seniority?

Is that position actually available, or will the person leaving it due to budget uncertainty stay in it?

If he takes this position, will the funding come through after the start of the next school year?

Should he leave his children in the neighborhood school, or move them with him to the next school?

Will he be given notice at the end of the next school year too? And the next?

In middle schools and high schools there are different complications. The guidance department is responsible for creating a schedule for the new year based on several different scenarios. They know who has the least seniority, and therefore they usually know which positions are being threatened. It takes a lot of man hours to create the potential schedules, and even more to place and replace them.

Questions still in play:

Is the English teacher certified in math too?

Can the PE teacher teach one science class?

Because teachers don’t have to be officially highly qualified, how qualified do they actually have to be?

While teachers are processing these “what if” questions, administrators and the school district’s human resource department are also working hard. They hypothetically place and replace teachers who may not actually need to move, and they interview for positions that may or may not funded, as they try to predict and prepare for the final decision. The bad news is that 18 teachers were released from MSBSD last year, and many others were part of the shuffle. But good news! All but 3 were rehired...or is that the bad news?

The result of this good news, bad news adventure is wasted time, energy, and money. The hours that employees are paid to work on worst case scenarios are for naught. Often the story ends with funding falling into place after the whole system is upset. Ultimately, and regardless of the date of funding, teachers will continue to teach and students will continue to learn, but is this the best way to do it?

Over the next couple months, MSBSD will submit the proposed budget, the Borough Assembly will determine the level of funding, and our legislators will have to finalize the state budget which will include education. Your support of prompt action and full funding will help MSBSD schools, employees, teachers, and ultimately your students.

Rebekah Kitchin teaches English at Palmer High School.