Last week, Governor Mike Dunleavy proposed a 20 million dollar cut in state education funding. If approved by legislators, the cut would reduce school budgets for the Upper Lynn Canal. The announcement has taken some school administrators by surprise.
Back in May of 2018, state legislators approved a one-time 20 million dollar increase in school funding. This provided the Haines School with an extra boost of about $40,000, roughly one percent of the school’s overall budget. The Skagway School was allocated just over $20,000 dollars.
But last week governor Dunleavy introduced a budget proposal to direct more funding for earthquake relief while repealing the increase in school funding.
Haines School Superintendent Roy Getchell says that the school board already drafted its budget for fiscal year 2019 with an increased allocation of state funds.
“The thing that is a question mark to me here is that this has been promised,” Getchell says. “The debate has already occurred. The decision has been made. It’s been in our budget. It’s been in every district in our state’s budget since that time. We’ve spent the money because that’s what we were told is what it’s going to be. The money was appropriated. It was allocated. As few as two weeks before our budget revision meeting in January, it was on the way.”
Getchell says that money received from the state goes into the school’s general fund, so it’s difficult to say dollar for dollar what the extra funds would have been spent on.
“But what we know is that staff is an expense that every school district spends most of its money on. The money’s been spent, we had been planning on that, and so 80 to 90 percent of that would have already gone into staff,” Getchell says.
Getchell wrote a letter to Governor Dunleavy last month, asking him to uphold the legislature’s decision to increase school funding for 2019.
“You know, we’ve certainly communicated with our legislators and appreciate their support and understanding with that. We’re concerned about it, monitoring daily and we will adjust accordingly,” Getchell says.
Skagway School Superintendent Josh Coughran declined to comment on Governor Dunleavy’s budget proposal because it has not been passed yet.
The proposal will need approval from the legislature to take effect. The governor will release a final revised state budget on February 13.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that the $40,000 allocation of state funding for the Haines School represented roughly two percent of the school’s overall budget. $40,000 is about one percent of the school’s budget.
The schools in this country simply spend an extraordinary amount of money on administration. School employees are the most over benefited people in the USA. The fact that we even have a school superintendent for a school of less than 300 students is insane. There is not even a full time job for the superintendent in Haines, seriously what does this guy do with his time everyday?
Pretty much nothing as far as I can tell. The school superintendent in Haines is the most underwhelming job you could ever hope for.
If the school system operated from any reality based point of view, you would combine (consolidate) the Skagway, Haines and Chatham school districts and have one superintendent for the combined district and instantly save $250,000 in salary and benefits. So in reality the school district wastes that $40,000 anyway. Cut the school budgets further, and make the schools accountable for the the performance of the students. The superintendent job in Haines is one of the most overpaid positions I have ever head of, and its just plain ridiculous. We pay more and more every year and the performance of the students is getting worse over time, the exact opposite of what should be happening.