Anchorage School District administrators proposed Monday that the district focus on hiring and retaining staff while also increasing pay for substitute teachers in reaction to news that the district is spending less money than it had budgeted for the school year.
Andy Ratliff, district budget director, told the School Board that the district is projected to underspend its budget by roughly $21.4 million if a number of variables don't change, including staff size. That figure has decreased slightly from $22 million presented in November; it will evolve as staff comes and goes, Ratliff said.
District administrator and School Board conversations Monday focused on what to do with the projected unspent dollars and whether the board should tailor the district's budget this year to spend them — weighing their options against expectations that the district will face a more than $70 million budget deficit over the next three years.
On Dec. 15, ASD Superintendent Ed Graff will present a final list of budget recommendations to the board for a vote.
WHERE THE MONEY COMES FROM
What drives a majority of the budget discrepancy this school year is the district's failure to hire as many employees as it expected, paired with the departure of more experienced, highly paid staff and the filling of their positions with younger, lower-paid employees.
According to Ratliff's presentation Monday, budget projections reveal that the district will spend about $10.6 million less than planned on salaries this school year and $7.4 million less on benefits. The rest of the $21.4 million comes from things like utilities and equipment.
The vacant positions are concentrated in maintenance, IT and special education, Ratliff said.
The maintenance department has the greatest vacancy rate in the district at 9.1 percent, or 15 positions, he said. In November, the district had roughly 11 fewer full-time IT employees than it had allotted for in its budget and about 45 fewer positions filled in special-education, gifted and English Language Learners programs. A majority of the 45 full-time positions are concentrated in special education, according to Mark Foster, the district's chief executive officer. The district was also short nearly 38 full-time teacher assistants.
HOW TO ADDRESS HIRING
A number of factors influence the district's failure to fill positions, Superintendent Graff told the board, including uncompetitive salaries and unstable funding from the state that cripples job security.
Because the district's and state's budget years misalign, the district often issues layoff notices to teachers before it receives funding from the state that allows it to restructure and recall pink slips -- a process that depletes morale, said Marty Decker, an English teacher at Chugiak High School, testifying before the board Monday.
The vacancy rate also pushes more work onto other staff, he said. "I think it's a rather deplorable situation."
Decker's claim is exemplified in special education, where, to fill the gap, the district has provided additional teacher assistant support time for students by asking its existing staff to work extra hours in the day, said Linda Carlson, district assistant superintendent.
"We're stretching them very thin," Carlson said. "As the needs increase in the schools and we have limited resources, we're asking them to take on more of a caseload than they had in the past. They've done a really monumental task."
If the district can't find teachers interested in taking on more hours, it also looks outside the district, Carlson said.
Robb Donohue-Boyer, the district's director of staff and recruiting, recommended the School Board hire a recruiter to help fill open positions.
"If we're serious about attacking these vacancies, I think we need to provide funds to hire a focused recruiter," Donohue-Boyer said.
Another issue the administrators sought to address Monday is substitute teachers who have not seen a salary boost in seven years. The pool of substitutes is shrinking along with the pool of applicants for staff positions, Donohue-Boyer said.
He did not specify by how much he would like to see substitutes' salaries increased, but he also proposed creating incentives to increase the number of times a substitute agrees to work each year.
Carla Burkhead, the mother of a first-grader at Airport Heights Elementary, said her son, Dylan, has gone through two long-term substitutes in the past six weeks and countless short-term substitutes while his teacher is on medical leave. He has been shuffled between classrooms when a substitute isn't available, Burkhead told the board.
For him, that means no consistency, she said. "Six weeks ago, Dylan's teacher left for medical leave. Six weeks ago was the last time he had a constant education guide in his life."