Potential $700 BSA increase may still lead to Fairbanks school district budget deficit, superintendent says

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU/KTVF) - In the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District, the $700 addition to the Base Student Allocation that passed as part of House Bill 57 — but has not yet been signed into law — will likely not lead to extra money in the district’s budget, said FNSBSD Superintendent Luke Meinert.

In its April 1 budget recommendation submitted to the borough, the school district anticipated a $680 per student increase in state funding, which is $20 less per student than was passed by state lawmakers.

“Generally, folks would think that that would lead to some additional funding that our Board of Education could use in their approved budget cycle,” Meinert said, “but unfortunately, that won’t be the case this year.”

The superintendent said the district planned for another one-time funding increase, like the one seen in 2024, rather than additional funding within the BSA formula.

If the permanent increase to the BSA becomes law, the district’s obligation regarding charter school funding increases to around $500,000.

“The board would need to go back in the approved budget process and make charters whole, so that they wouldn’t receive just a portion of that additional funding,” Meinert said. “They would receive it all.”

This, Meinert expects, will not only use up the money that would have been gained by the extra $20 per student, but will leave the district with a slight deficit to work through.

However, Meinert discussed two state funding options that could potentially bring the district’s budget back into the black, including funding for the Reads Act and Career and Technical Education (CTE) that are attached to HB 57.

“Both of those components of the bill are reliant on another bill passing in the Legislature,” he said, referring to SB 113, “to actually fund those components. But if, you know, the Reads Act or CTE funding came through, then we could be looking at a surplus situation at that point in time.”

Alaska’s News Source reached out to the school district to ask specifically about any impacts the BSA increase may have on teaching positions that had been eliminated in the district’s recommended budget, but had not heard back as of publication.

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