Process of funding public education borders on crazy

There’s a problem with how we fund schools. We see our own business costs climb year to year — paper costs more, fuel costs more, utilities cost more. It’s likely we are not the only enterprise paying more to keep the lights and heat on and more in wages.

Monday, Matanuska Electric Association announced that we all will pay more for power beginning this month — about 7.8 percent more. For average homeowners, that’s $9 a month.

But across the Mat-Su Borough School District, what will the change tally? Without an increase in funding at the state or borough levels, that one thing by itself means less money in the classroom for Mat-Su students.

The education funding process in Alaska is convoluted and circular. First, the local district presents a balanced budget based on its previous year’s budget and projected numbers of students.

That document was completed April 1 locally. As written, next school year 45 district employees will be shed due to budget cuts.

But that’s not the final budget.

There are numerous inputs yet to go — the state hasn’t decided what it’s going to do on education funding, and neither has the Mat-Su Borough. Eventually, the Mat-Su Borough Assembly will have to give the final approval.

A big chunk of education dollars come from the federal government and are passed on to local districts through the state Department of Education and Early Development. How much money the state contributes is a yearly debate in Juneau, and this year appears to be one that is not going to go the district’s way.

From Gov. Sean Parnell to our local legislators, the word has been no increase, flat funding from this year to next. The idea is that increased funding in past years hasn’t brought increased performance.

In a letter to a constituent that illustrates the current attitude in Juneau, Palmer Rep. Shelley Hughes wrote, “I am concerned about the sadly mediocre test and graduation results we’re getting statewide at this time. With Alaska already spending more than most states per student and our revenues on a steady downward trend, we need to think outside the box as far as funding and the Base Student Allocation.”

Flat funding, though, isn’t flat. The cost of doing business, as we have said, is going up. In this case, it adds up to multiple millions of dollars in increased wages in our school district.

That the district has managed to absorb that with only 45 cuts is actually kind of remarkable.

But you know what? Those 45 people aren’t all going to be given pink slips. We can almost guarantee it.

A lot of employees lacking in seniority, though, are going to be biting their nails on the edge of their seats between now and the end of budget season. All because of a government process rather than because of their skills or the way they teach.

We can imagine a few ways to avoid this. The budget process could be rearranged to allow the district to not have to hand out pink slips until it has a better idea what funding is going to look like. Or we could allow the district to build up reserve funds so that flat funding isn’t such a big hit.

Whatever changes we implement, if any, our hope is they go toward restoring sanity to the budget process. Because right now it seems kind of crazy.