School district not concerned about budget hole — yet

WASILLA — You might have heard about a $7.3 million hole in the Mat-Su Borough School District’s budget.

While that may seem like a big deal, district number crunchers gathered at a first of a series of budget meetings Wednesday in a portable classroom at Fronteras Charter School say it’s not.

“You will see a budget that looks like the sky is falling, but every year it gets better,” superintendent Deena Paramo said.

It gets better because the district has to put together its budget each year while the state Legislature is in session. Since the bulk of district money comes from the state, the exact dollar amount at which the Legislature decides to fund schools is hugely important.

Bills in play now could shrink that hole to $5.26 million to $2.67 million, eliminate it all together or replace it with a $5 million surplus. Some of those bills are more likely than others to pass. One would provide full funding for correspondence school students. Currently, a correspondence student provides the district with 80 percent of the money his or her regular school colleague provides.

Correspondence, though, no longer means what it used to. Many of those students take a class or two at local schools.

“I think it’s a recognition that we’re doing more than just a home-school program,” Paramo said.

A second piece of legislation would increase the base amount the state gives per student. Gov. Sean Parnell has introduced the legislation. He mentioned it in his State of the State address at the start of the legislative session as part of a larger plan to pass school reform.

Paramo said she the rate Parnell settled on — adding $85 to the so-called Base Student Allocation of $5,860 per pupil — is just a starting point. She said she is confident the Legislature will add to that.

“I was going to say I would bet my next paycheck, but I don’t know who I would pay it to,” Paramo said.

The last piece of legislation, the one that would turn that deficit into a surplus, is a plan to add $404 to the per-pupil allocation. Sponsored by Sen. Berta Gardner, D-Anchorage, the amount there was calculated by continuing the rate of increases the state was making to the allocation before the Legislature decided in 2011 to stop increasing it.

The bill also ties the increases to the consumer price index — generally considered a good measure of regional inflation.

Luke Fulp — the district’s chief financial officer — pointed out that the structural deficit the district predicts over the coming years is roughly equal to the rate of inflation.

Without some kind of mechanism to take inflation into account, the state’s formula for funding schools “could lose its ability to adequately fund schools,” he said.

Paramo said that it’s difficult to project a budget when both the state and the Mat-Su Borough — the other main funding source for the district — haven’t yet decided what to give the district in terms of funding. But she said right now she wants teachers to worry about instruction, not about budgets and deficits and what that means for their employment.

“Until it is at a time when it’s a crisis, we focus on the classroom,” she said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.