Fairbanks school leaders: $700 BSA increase would be offset by charter school costs

FAIRBANKS, Alaska (KTUU) - If the $700 per student funding increase the legislature passed Wednesday becomes law, Fairbanks North Star Borough School District leaders said Friday, budget benefits may be cancelled out by costs associated with the funding increase being permanent, instead of one-time.

If the funding ends up going into effect, the district would receive $20 per student more than the $680 increase Fairbanks leaders budgeted for, district leaders told Alaska’s News Source.

In their April 1 recommended budget submitted to the Borough, district leaders assumed a $680 increase to the BSA, with the school board releasing a memorandum later identifying decreasing the Pupil-Teacher Ratio (PTR) as the primary use of funding above that amount.

However, School Board Member Brandy Harty clarified that the budget assumed the $680 increase would come as one-time funding, rather than an increase to the BSA itself.

This, she said, would leave the district responsible for providing about $500,000 in additional charter school funding. Something Harty said had not happened with one-time funding increases.

“There is a small loophole within the statute that doesn’t directly outline one-time funding as having to be completely passed to charters,” Harty explained.

Because the district’s recommended budget had not planned for that expenditure, Harty said if the BSA increase moves forward, additional charter school funding may need to be found somewhere else in the budget.

If there is leftover funding after charter school costs, Harty said, because it remains unclear where it would be spent, school board members would have to meet and decide.

“Everybody is pretty committed to bringing down PTR (pupil teacher ratio) as much as we can, but that $20 extra in the BSA, it’s not going to generate enough, once we’ve plugged the charter school, you know, one time funding hole that was created, to do a whole lot,” she said.

This situation, Harty said, would leave the school district with choices about whether to decrease class sizes, focus on specific education levels, or add back eliminated positions.

“I can’t say where the board will land because at that point we’re saying, ‘What is going to have the most impact in the lives of students?’”

While Superintendent Luke Meinert was unable to provide exact numbers, if HB 57 becomes law with no other funding options, he predicted the district would be left with a slight deficit, including Reads Act and Career and Technical Education (CTE) funding attached to the bill, both of which he said would need HB 113 to pass in order to be effective.

“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; they would receive it all,” Meinert said.

He clarified that the balance would be close, and that any deficit created by a permanent BSA increase would be small compared to what the board has already faced this year.

It remains unclear when HB 57’s final district budget impact will be fully known.

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