The Juneau School Board approved a revised budget of $85.6 million for next school year last night. It takes into account two possible scenarios since the school district is still waiting for the Alaska Legislature to approve the state budget.
If the legislature passes the governor’s proposed budget, the Juneau School District would keep class sizes the same in kindergarten through fifth grade, but increase them in grades 6-12.
If the legislature passes the budget it adopted at the end of its regular session, the district will increase class sizes in grades 3-12. District finance head David Means says that’s a difference of 1.5 teaching positions. To maintain current K-2 class sizes at the lower funding level, the district would use about $300,000 from $500,000 in back funding the Juneau Assembly recently appropriated to schools.
Board member Brian Holst was the only no vote. He says wanted more discussion about how to use the new funding from the city. One of the things he’s concerned about is money for activities.
“In our accreditation for the high schools, we saw that technology was our weakest area. And I also think we should talk about – are there some things that we could be doing to better utilize technology in our schools?” Holst said. “So those are just some ideas that I thought we needed to discuss before we commit the very limited resources that we have.”
Means says depending on how the budget turns out, he’ll be going back to the board to decide how to use the remainder of the $500,000.
“Some of us administrators are thinking we ought to be using this over a two-year period, because we’ll be facing some difficulties next year as well, the FY ’17,” Means said.
The approved budget assumes the Juneau Assembly will fund the district to the maximum amount allowed by state law and give an additional $770,000 outside the cap, mostly for high school activities.
The Assembly will finalize its own budget and the school budget on Monday.
