The Anchorage School District superintendent and some board members said Thursday they are waiting on more information before making a decision on what to do with millions of budgeted dollars expected to go unspent this school year.
On Monday, district chief financial officer Mark Foster announced a projected $22 million budget surplus. The money comes primarily from the salaries and benefits budgeted for scores of staff and teaching positions that the district has so far failed to fill. However, if it does fill more positions, the pool of unspent funds could decrease.
The district also lost more experienced, higher-paid staff members than it anticipated and, to staff their positions, hired younger and lower-paid employees, Foster said.
News of the surplus came soon after the School District described a grim long-term financial outlook and a budget deficit of roughly $22.5 million for 2015-16 school year.
"We're still facing a budget gap next year," said Superintendent Ed Graff. "That has not changed."
Great Alaska Schools Anchorage, a nonpartisan coalition of parents and community members advocating for increased education spending, sent out a news release Thursday saying it was "shocked and troubled" to learn of the projected surplus.
Becca Bernard, co-founder of the coalition, said Thursday that one of her greatest concerns is "the district's decreasing ability to rehire teachers once they've been pink-slipped in the spring" because of the annual possibility of layoffs.
"I see this as a symptom of the bigger problem, that the state isn't providing the funding needed to keep up with the educational needs of children," Bernard said.
Bernard, along with members of Great Alaska Schools, lobbied the Alaska Legislature this year for an increase to the funding formula known as the "base student allocation," a rate set by the Legislature that determines how much money districts receive for each student enrolled.
The coalition's goal would have raised the BSA by $400 in 2015 and another $125 in each of the next two years. Democrats introduced bills incorporating the increases, but the bills did not pass. Ultimately, the final bill added $150 to the BSA in 2015 and $50 in the following two years -- not enough to prevent cuts at Alaska schools.
Foster on Monday presented suggestions for how the district could spend the money that may go unspent this year, including putting $17 million toward next year's budget to help mitigate the expected deficit.
The state uses a formula to limit how much in undesignated savings -- like the $22 million -- school districts can carry across fiscal years. Foster is fearful the district will exceed that limit next year. If it does, it must return that money to the state.
Foster also proposed putting some of the $22 million toward raises for substitute teachers and funding summer school, as well as a resource alignment study and a resource adequacy study.
He said he first learned of the $22 million when finalizing the district's first-quarter budget projection. In May, the district and School Board made their best estimates at staff size. Over the weekend, Foster found that the district staff size in November was much smaller than planned for in the spring.
A large budget discrepancy is unusual, he said, though the $22 million represents only 3 percent of the district's roughly $590 million budget.
"Basically we decided that given the magnitude of the projection, it made sense to bring that forward sooner rather than later," Foster said of his Monday announcement.
School Board member Kathleen Plunkett said Thursday she would like the money to go toward keeping teachers in the classroom but also to invest in long-term solutions that can shrink costs over multiple years.
She did not have specifics Thursday. She said while news of the $22 million surplus was "a little frustrating," it does give the district "some flexibility."
Foster estimated Monday that about $18 million of the $22 million was reserved in the budget for filling teacher and staff positions.
A majority of the unfilled jobs are in departments like maintenance, IT and district-wide administration. Some are school psychologists and special-education and elementary school positions.
Foster speculated that some of the district's staff got tired of the budget cutting process and quit or retired -- a cycle propelled by misaligned budget schedules for the district and Legislature.
For the 2014-15 school year, the district issued layoff notices to dozens of teachers and then rehired all but three.
Andy Holleman, head of the Anchorage Education Association teachers union, said Thursday that for several years "huge displacements" of staff have had an "enormous impact."
"I think we did have a surprising number of senior educators step out of the profession because it had just gotten unpleasant," Holleman said.
Holleman said he supported district administrators and the School Board putting some of the $22 million toward softening the deficit blow next school year, adding that "certainly I'm going to say that everyone has felt the impact of the understaffed IT department."
School Board Member Pat Higgins estimated that between five and seven entry level positions were unfilled in the district's IT department.
"I believe staff is working very hard to minimize that impact in the classroom with students, but that does make it more challenging for everyone," he said.
Higgins said describing the $22 million as a "surplus" is "misleading."
"Surplus implies that we've cut things that are wasteful, that are unnecessary," he said. "We've always cut administration, but we've cut it to the degree that we don't have that much anymore."
Higgins and superintendent Graff said they did not have a specific answer Thursday on what they would like the district to do with the unspent dollars.
Graff said he expects to present his recommendation to the School Board on Dec. 1. He said the district fell into this position because of the higher vacancy rate but also because of "conscientious business practices."
Often, the district did not immediately rehire when a position became vacant or it looked at ways of combining unfilled positions.
"My focus is always going to be on doing what's right for our students and our schools, and I think we must be forward thinking with the money and use it strategically," Graff said