School board asks for 6 percent local funding increase

PALMER — Higher than anticipated enrollment and increasing personnel costs mean school system officials are asking for more money this year — even as revenue pictures for state, federal and local government remain murky.

Mat-Su Borough School District officials face a $6.1-million gap between revenues and expenditures. On the revenue side, they’re looking at a $4.2-million state funding increase, based on increasing enrollment and a projected bump in the Base Student Allocation (BSA). On the expense side, the district faces $4.6 million in additional staffing, $2.4 million in increased salaries, an across-the-board salary increase of 1.25 percent and about $1 million worth of increased health insurance costs.

To bridge the gap, the district is trimming non-personnel spending, utilities, discretionary spending, as well as spending $5.9 million of the borough’s estimated $14-million savings. The district also plans to eliminate one full-time administrative position and reduce administration by another half of a position.

“The school board has gone back to our own savings account, not to the borough to ask for an increase to the cap,” Paramo told borough and school board officials.

Even so, school officials asked Tuesday for a six percent increase in the local contribution, and said they could face even larger shortfalls if the Legislature and local officials don’t increase the amount of funding available to them. For example, if the BSA came through but the borough didn’t, the deficit would rise to about $7.7 million. In that case, the district would use attrition to raise the student-to-teacher ratios at local middle and high schools, meaning as older teachers retired, the school system would not hire new teachers to replace them, according to assistant superintendent for business services Luke Fulp.

In the worst-case scenario — where the Legislature nixes the BSA increase and borough officials provide no increase — the budget gap would run to $11 million. School board members haven’t yet developed a detailed plan for that contingency, according to the information presented Tuesday.

The overall increase sought by school officials at a Tuesday joint meeting of the Mat-Su Borough School Board and the borough assembly is 6 percent above the current funding amount, known as the required local contribution. That would push the amount of borough-provided school funding from $52,680,472 to $55,841,300.

School system projections are also based on a $50 increase in the Base Student Allocation (BSA) portion allotted each year by the state legislature.

Officials aren’t immune to the political realities of the state’s budget crisis, said superintendent Deena Paramo. They’re also keeping an eye on the proposed BSA increase, Paramo said.

“For state funding, we’re assuming that this time the $50-increase remains in the BSA,” she said. “It was in the governor’s budget, it was in House Finance, it was in Senate Finance, but now the deals are made, and it goes back and forth.”

Cuts to the school system could also have wider ramifications, Paramo said.

“Not only are we affecting education, we’re affecting the total economy of the borough,” she said.

School board members also said they thought teachers and administrators had earned the increase.

“We know it’s a big ask, but we feel it’s very justified,” said school board member Kelsey Trimmer.

Providing the necessary resources for education could prove challenging, assemblyman Jim Sykes said.

“I think we want to support you as best we can,” he said. “It isn’t going to be easy.”

Contact reporter Brian O’Connor at 352-2270, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.