Education budget process needs repair

Each year, the Mat-Su Borough School District is first among many to roll out its proposed budget.

And each year, the district says the same thing: these numbers are subject to change. In fact, change is a foregone conclusion because of the tangled funding process the state uses.

The budgeting process the district goes through each year is a bit crazy. But the document we refer to as the district’s “budget” is really just one big educated guess.

That’s because while various laws require that the district to go first in announcing its budget, it is actually last in terms of receiving tax dollars to fund it. So the document the board passes every year is built in the dark, without knowing what state or local funding contributions will be.

Most of the money for our public schools comes from the state, but the Legislature won’t vote on education funding until months after the district has submitted its budget.

The next largest chunk of the education funding pie comes from the Mat-Su Borough but, again, the borough doesn’t decide its contribution to the district until well after the district is legally required to submit its proposed budget to the assembly.

An added wrinkle: the bulk of state funding is based on enrollment numbers, and those numbers don’t come in until just after the start of the next school year, which is many more months and after all three budgets have long been finalized.

This upside down budgeting can lead to some pretty comical presentations in which the district projects a dozen layoffs and slashed programs but then tells the audience that, really, it looks a lot worse than it is. Money will come. It always does.

Viewed this way, the budget as first presented is really more of a contingency plan than a road map.

“Here’s how we’ll cope with the absolute minimum amount of funding,” the district says.

We have yet to hear anyone sing the praises of this process. There’s good reason for that.

Commonsense suggests that the body last in line at the funding trough should be last to decide what to do with its revenue.

We can certainly sympathize with the Legislature and the Mat-Su Borough Assembly. Having the district go first means that those two bodies have a clear picture of what they buy if they add funding and what they toss overboard if they cut it.

The assembly and the Legislature should review the budget process districts use and determine whether it can be improved to better mesh with contract renewal deadlines, and the borough and state funding process.

While we are in search of educational efficiencies, we encourage our legislators to consider the process itself and whether there are savings to be had from a process that only asks districts to prepare a budget based on final funding numbers.