School District funding outlook provided to Assembly

PALMER — The Mat-Su Borough Assembly and Mat-Su Borough School Board held a joint meeting on Tuesday to discuss a number of funding items, including the preliminary approved budget from MSBSD.

School District Superintendent Dr. Randy Trani detailed the funding sources that the district draws from and the shortfalls due to decreased attendance. The Average Daily Membership is a figure used by the state to provide calculations for the Base Student Allocation. The MSBSD had over 19,000 students in 2020 and budgeted for that many last year when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The current student count is at 17,900, but Trani said that over 500 students have returned back to take classes in school buildings since the start of the school year. While the borough funds the school district at a rate of 6.3 mills, that only accounts for 27 percent of school district allocations.

“We had an $8.356 million deficit and we had to address that in order to present you folks with a balanced budget and we did it,” said Trani.

Trani noted the changes in the school district budget from what was originally presented to the balanced budget that was adopted by the school board. The MSBSD adjusted for $4.51 million in use of fund balance and another $940,000 in E-Rate funds, cutting the budget in a variety of different ways. Adjusted expenditures included reducing the amount of hold teachers by half, cutting four special education teachers, dropping the payroll reserve to .5 percent and over 47 full time employee positions that were funded by the second round of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Funds.

The average daily membership this year went down by 7.74 percent, but is expected to jump back up to 19,135 students for next year. The state funds over 70 percent of the school district budget with over $171 million and the school district has received a large portion of funding through Federal relief bills since the pandemic began. The Mat-Su Borough’s 6.3 mills equate to nearly $66 million in monies allocated to the school district.

“The reserve was built totally on one time monies, not out of our operations, except for what Dr. Trani was talking about. When the state talked about major cuts and when the state talked about zeroing out the bond money, we went into a hiring freeze and we also cut a lot of discretionary spending in the spring which left a lot of money that went into our reserve. We are working on a deficit mode,” said School Board President Ole Larson. “Our reserve will be cut down over the next three years to fund the money that we are in the hole for the last contracts that we did with our union and the flat BSA. We are not flush with money.”

The borough will set a minimum amount available for the district next month, and provide fund allocation following the borough budget process in June.