“There’s nothing off the list,” Superintendent Bill Burr said about potential cuts to the school district’s 2025-2026 budget. From exploring what life would be like as a satellite site of the Petersburg school district to eliminating teacher positions, Burr said the district is exploring everything and anything.
The draft budget presented to the school board last month showed a $1 million shortfall between projected revenue ($5.05 million) and proposed expenses ($6.1 million).
Covering that gap — without a significant boost in state funding — would completely drain the district’s operating reserve fund and still leave the schools in a $271,000 deficit at the end of the year.
School districts cannot legally adopt an unbalanced budget.
The projected $5.05 million in revenues assumes that the borough assembly funds the district at the maximum allowed under state law. Borough officials have informed the schools, however, not to expect the maximum allocation for the upcoming year as City Hall is grappling with funding struggles of its own.
The district hoped to have an updated draft budget ready at its meeting on March 17. However, the release of the newest draft was delayed until the joint work session between the school board and borough assembly at the Nolan Center on March 24.
In response to the expected budget deficit and the anticipated spending cuts to follow, two teachers spoke at the March 17 school board meeting and proposed budget reductions that they believe would cause the least damage to students’ education.
The prevailing suggestion from both Odile Meister and Michelle Clark, the latter of whom spoke on behalf of the Wrangell Teachers’ Association, was that the first positions to be cut should be at the administrative level.
“My husband went to school here in the ’70s and ’80s,” Meister, a Spanish teacher, said. “It was a time when the graduating classes were around 40 students, close to three times as many students as today … all with two principals and one superintendent.”
“What is our reality today?” Meister asked. “Even fewer students and the smallest (teaching) staff ever. What is our plan for next year? Two principals and one superintendent, and two fewer teachers. … Rather than eliminate two more teacher positions, what if instead we eliminated a principal?”
From an economic perspective, Meister’s plan would certainly save money. In the 2024-2025 school year, the school district paid its superintendent a salary of $142,000. Notably, Burr’s salary was bolstered by a recent raise that increased his annual salary nearly $40,000. The district’s secondary school principal earns $99,750 and the elementary principal earns $108,000 annually, plus benefits.
If the board were to go along with Meister’s plan and eliminate one principal, that move could cover about half of the district’s projected end-of-year 2025-2026 deficit.
For Meister, cutting an administrative position before a teaching role is logical.
“Every time a teacher is cut, that is the equivalent to six or more classes that disappear from the middle and high school schedule,” she said. “It means fewer electives and support classes, and more time in study hall and in online courses.”
Kindergarten teacher Michelle Clark, speaking on behalf of the teachers’ union, offered additional cost-saving suggestions.
In her presentation to the school board, Clark (and the Wrangell Teachers’ Association) proposed sharing a superintendent with another district; consolidating the two principal jobs into one, with a lead teacher position to ease the burden; reducing secretarial staff; eliminating school board travel; reducing administrative travel; partnering with the borough’s maintenance staff; reducing janitorial staff; offering a voluntary retirement incentive program; transferring funds from the district’s $1.2 million capital improvements fund to the district’s general operating fund; consolidating Evergreen Elementary into one of the two buildings it uses; eliminating the swim program; and hiring a grant writer to pursue external revenue sources.
“We believe these immediate solutions should be thoroughly explored and implemented before considering the major transition of consolidating schools or cutting an additional teaching position for the upcoming year,” Clark said.
She added that the teachers association views these “targeted adjustments” as “potential patches that can provide necessary short-term savings.” While the teachers acknowledged the precariousness of the situation is far from ideal, they believe the endgame could be a four-day school week and the consolidation of schools — “if those steps become absolutely necessary.”
The state Legislature may toss school districts a last-minute lifeline, though not enough to completely solve Wrangell’s budget problem.
Legislators are considering a substantial increase in the state funding formula for local school districts, something the House has already passed. If approved by the Senate and signed by the governor, the bill would cover more than half of Wrangell’s million-dollar budget gap, but it would still leave revenues several hundred thousand dollars short of matching expenses.
However, the Legislature is not likely to take final action on the state budget before the school district is required to submit its budget to the borough, further complicating the process.
State funding is the district’s single largest source of revenue.
Part of the reason for this year’s money problems in Wrangell is that Congress failed last year to reauthorize the 25-year-old Secure Rural Schools funding program. Secure Rural Schools had provided roughly half of the borough’s contribution to the schools before last year.
Without that federal aid, the borough would have to dip into its own reserves to fund the schools at the maximum allocation for 2025-2026. Since last November, the borough has reiterated that doing so would be unsustainable.
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