Hundreds of ways to spend $780,000

The Mat-Su Borough School Board has until the end of this month to spend the roughly $780,000 remaining from nearly $2.3 million in state energy supplement funding or lose half the remaining to the Borough.

Board members will discuss the remaining funds Wednesday and will have to act quickly to resolve a division where some members want to use the money to address needs on a list prepared by the district’s administration while others want to persuade the Mat-Su Borough Assembly to allow the district to keep the money to spend after the June 30 deadline.

Seems puzzling that the state’s second-largest school district (that’s right, at more than 16,000 students, the Mat-Su district is second only to Anchorage) would have trouble identifying needs this money could address before the June 30 cutoff date. While the assembly has maintained that any of the energy supplement money that may filter down to the Borough would be applied to a fund for school site acquisition, the board is unhappy with that compromise.

Borough Assemblyman Tom Kluberton has been buffaloed that the school district is having trouble identifying immediate needs for the $780,000, as are we.

School district officials aren’t pleased with part of the money going to the Borough because, as district spokeswoman Catherine Esary has explained it, “The school site fund is not money that is readily available to be spent on necessary items.”

If there are “necessary items” on which this district can spend this money, do it. There are schools in the Mat-Su Borough School District where students cannot take textbooks home to study from because there aren’t enough to go around. If the school board is having trouble deciding where to put this windfall to the best use, then let others make the call.

Take the $780,000 and give each of the district’s 42 school principals $18,571.42 to spend on necessary and reasonable purchases for their schools. Even facing a tight deadline, we’re confident our school principals are in touch with the shortfalls and needs in their buildings and can make good decisions that will make direct impacts for our children and their education.

Some on the board, like newly appointed Myrl Thompson and Jim Colver, would like to hold the money over to the 2009 fiscal year.

“I would like to see some of it, personally, spent in ‘09 trying to save some classes that we had,” Thompson said at a recent board meeting.

“We need that money for next year more than we need it this year,” Colver added.

Maybe, but those politically savvy enough to win an election or appointment to the board of the state’s second-largest school district should know there is no free money. The state granted the $2.3 million, and by accepting that money, the local school district agreed to adhere to the guidelines associated with taking that money. One of those requirements is a timetable for spending the money, something lawmakers must have felt strongly about to add a use-it-or-lose-it clause.

Sure, the Mat-Su Borough Assembly could elect to waive taking any or a portion of the money, but it doesn’t have to. Our schools need more technology to ensure safety, which has prompted the district to consider a $9 million bond issue. If there are no other immediate options, purchase some of that equipment — make one school safer — and ask voters for $8.2 million instead.

It will be a tough sell for the school board to ask for funds from voters if the board dithers away three-quarters of a million dollars.