Members of the Wrangell School District and the borough assembly came together for a joint workshop on the school district’s recently adopted budget. As Superintendent Debbe Lancaster said in the past, and repeated in Monday evening’s meeting, this was a “no fat” budget that was operating very close to the district’s bare minimum. The FY 2020 budget is assuming $6.34 million in revenue, and almost the same in expenses. In comparison, this is a decrease from the FY 2019 budget which had expenses set at roughly $6.61 million, but still higher than the FY 2017 budget of $5.79 million in expenditures.
“Normally a school starts off with 10 percent reserved, in case there’s a problem with getting funding, they can make payroll at the beginning of the year,” Lancaster said. “So we want to carry over 10 percent maximum from one year to the next. In this particular budget … instead of our $600,000 plus reserve budget of 10 percent, we only have about $132,000 set as reserves. So that’s the ‘no fat’ budget, there’s not a lot of frills in this.”
Lancaster pointed out that this budget is making some major assumptions. For one, it assumes that there will be no funding cuts at the state level. Governor Mike Dunleavy caused quite a stir in school districts across the state when he announced his desire to cut the Base Student Allocation by roughly 23 percent. However, this plan has faced opposition in the state house and senate. The district is also assuming that they will see higher enrollment, at 316 students next year. This would bring in approximately half of the district’s revenue via the BSA. There are also some parts of the budget that are still “up in the air,” she said. The school lunch program is increasing in cost, for example. The district is considering raising the price of school lunches by 50 cents in response. Transportation is another issue the district is still grappling with, as their bus contracts will need to be renewed in the near future.
As far as the borough is involved, this budget is expecting the city to contribute $616,689 to the school district. Lancaster said that this is the bare minimum the city can contribute. They would like more, she said, but the district understands that Wrangell is facing similar financial questions at the state level as the schools are. They are also looking at receiving approximately $800,000 in Secure Rural Schools funding. The district is also hoping for about $43,000 from the city for various maintenance and renovation projects.
“One disclaimer here,” Lancaster said. “I spoke with Lisa [Von Bargen] on Friday and she had wanted more detail from us. I’m not sure how much you know about what goes on in our organization, but as late as Friday afternoon we had a major special meeting, and they approved an elementary leadership position. Until that was actually done we were not able to make room assignments, student distributions, and things like that. Some of our costs haven’t been divided up exactly to what you may or may not want. We’ve given you the best numbers that we can, now, with our organization because we’re still getting settled.”
Capital Improvement Projects, or CIP, were a big topic of discussion between the assembly and the school district representatives. David Powell pointed to the budget, saying that the school board had only set aside $18,000 for building repair. There was concern amongst the assembly, he said, that the district was ignoring minor maintenance projects in the school buildings until it became a major problem, which the city was then required to chip in to fix. Georgianna Buhler, and Maintenance Director Josh Blatchley said that this was not the case, the district simply did not have a good definition of what constituted a “major” repair. Borough Manager Lisa Von Bargen said that, as a working definition, the borough was assuming that any repairs that cost $25,000 or more would be considered a major repair. The school representatives assured the assembly that they were keeping their maintenance regular in the district, fixing small problems before they became big problems, but with the current budget situation there was not much extra money to spare for that certain item.
The assembly also pointed out travel as one of several school district expenses that had been increased. Student travel for regional activities, for example, was increased from $135,900 in FY 2019 to $190,900 in 2020. Lancaster said that this was because the district was making the assumption that the state ferry system would go defunct in October, due to state budget cuts, and the increased expenses were for students to travel via plane. Powell also asked why school staff were being allotted $50,500 for travel. It was a decrease from FY 2019, which was set at $73,320, but Powell said that if the money was not being spent on students, he did not see why it should be spent at all. School Board President Aleisha Mollen explained that the staff travel expenses were largely for the school board and other staff to leave Wrangell for job training and certification. She also added that some of the money would also be used to take students with the staff on education-related trips.
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