School district prepares budget scenarios

PALMER — Following the regular school board meeting, Mat-Su Borough School District Superintendent Dr. Monica Goyette laid out her plans for each step of $2.5 million in cuts that would need to be made should Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s proposed budget pass as written.

While school district officials were planning for the worst and hoping for the best on Feb. 13 when Dunleavy’s budget dropped, Goyette believes that through support for education funding expressed by the people of Alaska, it would be near impossible to achieve a $1,000 cut to the Base Student Allocation.

“I think the most painful thing in this budget process is just having to walk through it and wait till late June for what our actual revenue is going to be,” Goyette said.

Goyette laid out the five steps of priorities that school district officials identified as able to be cut depending on how the budget turns out. The House of Representatives has already sent its operating budget to the Senate. After amendments and passage through the Senate, Dunleavy will have a chance to use his red pen. The length of this year’s budget process has frustrated entities in the Mat-Su Valley. Both the School Board and the Mat-Su Borough Assembly have had to prepare for the worst, and are only now seeing some relief in possible funding. Human Resources Executive Director for MSBSD Katherine Garner along with Assistant Superintendent Luke Fulp helped to outline the difficulties and areas that had been identified as possible for cuts. Should the district see draconian cuts to the budget as in Dunleavy’s original proposal, 390 positions would have to be cut.

“When there’s discussions that continue to happen about cuts to the district office, cuts to administration, don’t cut the classroom, one of the things that’s hard for people to sort of understand is that at the level of cuts that we’re talking about, it has to reach the classroom, unfortunately. If we cut every position that’s not connected to a school, that’s only 277 positions, and if we do a proportional cut under the governor’s budget we have to get to 390,” Gardner said.

Fulp identified that there had been discussions about reducing the number of routes that the school district offers for school buses through First Student. At a cost of $500 a day per bus, buses run 154 routes for 170 days. It would reduce the amount of discounts offered by First Student, as the district would be operating at below the agreed upon contract level, but would result in some savings nonetheless. Dr. Goyette and Fulp met with Dunleavy on April 8 to discuss the budget and school district priorities. Dr. Goyette said that much of the conversation revolved around regulations and statutes that could be removed to help the district operate more efficiently. With no increase to the BSA in four years and previous lawsuits surrounding what adequate funding really means, Goyette does not see Dunleavy’s $1,000 cut to the BSA making it through the legislature’s veto override power. MSBSD did not build the $30 million of one-time monies into the budget, and would not be as adversely affected by such cuts. While Goyette’s five steps of possible $2.5 million reductions outlined what the district would have to do, the administration is also considering an increased use of 25 percent of the fund balance to make up for some of that cost shifting. Goyette said it’s more than likely that the BSA cut will not occur.

“There are other large districts that are not organizing around that budget,” Goyette said.

The areas that will receive reductions or simply not receive upgrades are professional development, operations and maintenance, and other non-classroom centric positions, with the school district’s priority focused on preserving programs for kids in the classroom. The administration reduced all discretionary funds by 10 percent and identified the five layers of $2.5 million reductions through non-personnel spending, classified staffing reductions, and certified staffing reductions. Each of the five priorities would see a 10 percent decrease to extra curricular activities, where MSBSD currently spends $3.5 million. Goyette said that the reductions were centered at district office in the first layer of priorities to survive short term. While Goyette said that high quality professional development is directly correlated to higher levels of student achievement, that is one of the main areas that would see reductions. Goyette said that they believe that short term professional development could be paused without negative impacts, but professional development needed to be a part of the district’s plan long term. Positions listed within each category were not specific to school or teacher, as Goyette wanted to keep employees from panicking. If one in six teachers were told they would not have their job in the fall and Dunleavy’s budget did not pass as written and much of the proposed cuts were left in the funding, damage to morale and attitude of those who had been notified that they would not be re-hired was something Goyette wanted to avoid. Goyette said that though legislation had passed incentivizing school consolidation, plans to move Trapper Creek students to Talkeetna would likely not achieve the desired results and that was not something the district was planning to do at the moment. By the time Goyette had reached the fourth possible reduction of $2.5 million, high school Pupil to Teacher Ratio would increase to 33:1. The fifth priority of reductions would increase PTR at nearly every level. After four reductions, or $10 million, the district could no longer make any reductions above requirement, and the amount of students in classrooms would increase dramatically. Goyette said that upon seeing the budget, the district had immediately consulted with the fire marshall and that the threshold was 50 students. Classrooms will not fit 50 students, desks, and chairs, and the space threshold is at 40.

eSports controversy

MSBSD Executive Director of Instruction Reese Everett gave an administrative report of the eSports pilot that has taken the district by storm since last fall. The Alaska School Activities Association let districts know last fall that they supported a pilot program for esports starting, and districts then informed their schools. Initial interest was overwhelming, and the school district had found a way to reach students who might not otherwise participate in after school activities. Everett said that Palmer High School eSports Coaches Nichelle Henry and Sarah Kitzan were shocked that two-thirds of the team was made up of upperclassmen, and two thirds of those upperclassmen had never participated in an afterschool activity before.

“We’ve totally hit a nerve on a couple of different aspects. We’ve got all these kids involved in this activity, and we are probably somewhat playing catchup,” Board Member Ray Michaelson said. “One redeeming grace of this whole thing, I think though is that there is a group of kids that are out there that haven’t gotten together before. I think that’s hugely important.”

Everett said that the Yukon-Koyokuk School District plans to present eSports to become a sanctioned ASAA sport at the spring meeting on April 24 and 25 in Kodiak. While the Electronic Gaming Federation outlined four games, Fornite, Rocket League, League of Legends and Overwatch as possible games for high school teams, the immensely popular Fortnite was not selected by MSBSD, even though other Alaskan school districts did choose to offer Fortnite. Board President Dr. Donna Dearman wanted clarification that students were not using school computers to play Fortnite. Member Ole Larson went even farther.

“Excessive gaming, which is a really bad thing in our society where kids game eight to 10 to 15 hours over the weekend which leads to everything negative,” Larson said.

Larson was perplexed, and asked Everett where the public notification was that this was taking place. Everett said that much of the communication had taken place in email, and partnerships with GCI and MTA made eSports possible, as MTA took some of the financial burden off of MSBSD. Schools were given 40 new computers, five to each of the eight original high schools that wanted to participate. During the spring semester, Palmer Junior Middle School and Wasilla Middle School have also developed non-competitive eSports teams. Larson continued to question, wondering why the school board was not notified earlier. Larson said that the issue had become controversial, and wondered where were the written school district standards.

“My view on graphic killing games, they say it could be contributing factor to a kid being violent. I don’t want the school district to be a contributing factor to any of that,” Larson said. “Are we going to have some sort of standards?”

Everett detailed the gaming regulations, similar to movie ratings that serve as guidelines for what students can play what games. Overwatch is not offered at the middle school level as it is rated for teens. Mat-Su Central School has added their own wrinkle, requiring eSports gamers to enter hand-written notes into journals detailing their gameplay.

“An unknown from them is the amount of collaboration and communication and team building that occurs with this activity,” Everett said.

Goyette discussed an Administrative Regulation Committee that is a part of the School District’s guidelines, but has never been a part of the process in her 14 years of administration. Goyette said that the committee could be created to serve as a governing body for pilot projects such as these, among other school district business.

“I believe the school district is going about this in the correct way,” Board Member Sarah Welton said.

Executive Director of Instruction Traci Pedersen detailed a number of new classes that will be introduced next fall. Advanced Placement Human Geography is a course designed to introduce freshmen to AP courses, but not serve as a graduation requirement.

“We had an opportunity to discuss this in Student Advisory Board, specifically the AP human geography course with 8th graders. They seemed appreciative for the opportunity to have an AP course as freshmen,” said Student Representative Emily Gage. “There’s a huge dropout rate because of AP World History because it’s such an adjustment. This is a course that’s not necessarily something you need in terms of graduation requirements, but gives them an opportunity to experience a whole other area that the curriculum does not cover now.”

Fundamentals of Language Arts and Fundamentals of Math classes were also added as a renaming of current classes that could serve students from 6th to 8th grades. Career and Technical Education courses were also presented. Intro to Agriculture has been separated out from Intro to Agriculture and Natural Sciences. Intro to Ag students will cover animal science, horticulture, soil science, aquaculture, production and leadership. Natural resources students will cover forestry, wildlife, land management, marine science, aquaculture and mineral extraction. Both had previously been covered in one semester. Computer science courses were renamed to the Internet of Everything and CS.Create to attract more students to computer science courses without leaving computer science in the course name. Through cooperation with Native federations and tribal partners, MSBSD will now offer Alaska Food and Culture as a culinary arts course.