School funding approved, district seeks transportation savings

MAT-SU -- Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District chief school administrator Robert Doyle, School Board President Mike Chmielewski and public information specialist Kim Floyd huddled around a speaker phone last Friday, June 6, listening in as Gov. Frank Murkowski signed Senate Bill 202, approving full funding for the FY04 school year.

Sighs of relief filled the room as the governor discussed the bill's passing, and the trio appeared satisfied with the governor's decision.

"I think it is great," Chmielewski said. "We won't have to cut the budget anymore this year -- we've already been through a lot."

Doyle agreed.

"This doesn't restore anything we cut in April, but it didn't get any worse," Doyle said.

In fact, the rearranging of funds, namely the Learning Opportunity Grants elimination and roll over into the school foundation formula, means that the per-pupil funding actually increases from $4,010 to $4,169 per student for the upcoming year. Education funding for the state equaled out at $4,701.3 million, $32 million higher than fiscal year 2003. The Mat-Su district will receive $52,326 more than originally planned in the borough's FY04 budget.

"If this wasn't passed, we would have had to use local funding to pick up the difference the state didn't pay for," Chmielewski said.

Murkowski also approved a change in pupil transportation funding. Murkowski's original plan was to continue the transportation reimbursement program, but only reimburse schools at 80 percent. Many educators and affiliates statewide thought this eliminated any sort of incentive to cut costs -- no matter how efficient the bus system is, a district still only gets 80 percent of what it spent, they said -- and lobbied for the 'lesser of two evils,' a bill originally introduced by House Rep. Carl Gatto, R-Palmer.

Gatto introduced HB 259, the predecessor of the transportation section of SB 202, which stated that schools will get full funding for the pupil transportation program, but instead of a reimbursement program the funding is provided by a grant program. This allows the district to receive transportation funding up front and includes incentives to cut transportation costs, because any grant money saved that year goes directly into that district's classroom budget.

Doyle says the district is already looking at ways to cut transportation cost, which may include high school and middle school students riding to school together.

This is really an incentive to reduce (costs)," Doyle said. "What the district saves goes right back into the classroom."

But the good news also came with somber undertones. Murkowski also noted that sacrifices in other areas of the FY04 state budget will be made in order to provide the full funding for education.

"We will be announcing those sacrifices in the near future," Murkowski said. "With full funding, I expect full accountability by the education community in improving student proficiency."

The district is already one step ahead of the game on accountability. Last October, the district contracted the services of Phi Delta Kappa to perform a Curriculum Management Audit.

Some of the audit's findings directly answer questions Murkowski has asked to get educators thinking about how classrooms are run, and how costs can be cut without hurting the quality of education.