Alaska's schools are bearing the brunt of Alaska's fiscal crisis, but that crisis should not serve as a rationale for violating the public trust. Our problems stem from an economy with no real diversity, a legacy of over-spending, and blind reliance on a volatile commodity in declining supply -- oil.
The Fairbanks North Star Borough School District is uniquely burdened by the state's budget problems due to additional factors such as declining enrollment and heating costs. Our school board just cut $11 million to simultaneously balance our superintendent's budget and preserve class size at the status quo. This budget process was not an exercise in eliminating redundancies and cutting fat, it was an actual reduction in our community's capacity to provide high quality education.
The Alaska Constitution mandates that the Legislature must maintain public schools. So, like most districts, we sent our representatives to Juneau to discuss school funding this session. The discussions focused on our priority projects, not the Base Student Allocation, the formula by which schools are funded in Alaska. Remember, this very same Alaska Senate "forward funded" schools so that communities could rely on a known BSA for budgeting this year. While pessimistic, at no time during those Juneau meetings did any member of the Legislature -- including our Interior delegation -- suggest the BSA may be reduced. We budgeted accordingly and, by all accounts, responsibly.
So you can imagine the sense of betrayal when the Senate blindsided our district with a 4 percent reduction to the BSA for the upcoming year. This 11th-hour heist removes 55 classroom teachers from our schools. Because they ambushed Alaskans only hours before the Senate's version of the budget was voted on, no school district and no Alaskan was allowed to give public testimony on this important issue. The Senate sandbagged us.
By intentionally denying Alaskans the ability to testify and participate in the legislative process, the Senate violated the public trust. I understand that when education was forward funded, the extent of this financial crisis was unknown. But once the financial crisis came into focus, ensuing frank legislative discussions should have enabled districts to prepare during the budgeting process and should have given Alaskans the opportunity to comment on any reduction to the BSA. But the Senate took the low road, kept their intentions secret, and denied districts any ability to budget realistically. While the state senators' decision to fool districts into trusting them this year may succeed, we won't be fooled again.
Unfortunately, the long term victims of the Senate's action will not only be our children's education, but Alaskans' ability to trust our legislators.
Michael O'Brien is a Fairbanks attorney and an elected member of the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District.
The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, e-mail commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com