Anchorage School District seeks community input on how to balance next year’s budget

As the Anchorage School District faces down a $98 million deficit, it is soliciting community input this week on where it might make cuts to balance the budget for the upcoming school year.

Teachers, students, families and community members will have until Friday to fill out a survey that lays out potential reductions and asks the public to rank different aspects of school in order of importance— including sports, electives, security and transportation.

“Typically, we use this to get a gauge on what the community’s values are,” said the district’s chief financial officer, Andy Ratliff, who helped create the annual survey, which typically garners thousands of responses.

“We do get surprised sometimes by what the community values, and the survey is meant to keep us in touch,” said Anchorage School Board member Andy Holleman.

[Anchorage School District Fiscal Year 2025 Community Budget Survey]

The survey presents a range of possible budget trims and “efficiencies” the district might make, including across-the-board reductions and cuts to the administration, as well as hiring and travel freezes, and solicits other suggestions.

Ratliff said that while the results of the survey are often fairly similar year to year — “people generally value smaller class sizes, safe and clean schools, sports and activities” — the freeform question for people to put in their own ideas is particularly valuable.

“It gets the community engaged,” Ratliff said. “It really lets them know that we’re having to make reductions, and these are the items we’re considering so they can maybe come testify to the school board or write a letter in support of a program.”

ASD administrators will have until February to present a balanced budget to the Anchorage School Board, which must approve it and send it to the Anchorage Assembly for review by early March.

Board members and administrators have described a particularly grim financial outlook this year following years of flat state funding and the drying up of pandemic relief funds the district relied on in the past to balance the budget.

“We’ve kind of been building up this fiscal cliff for years,” Ratliff. “And this year, we don’t have any projected one-time funds other than what we have in savings to keep us going.”

The school board and Anchorage Assembly are considering a joint resolution that asks for an increase in state education funding and warns of imminent cuts to hundreds of teacher and staff positions without state assistance.

District superintendent Jharrett Bryantt has said there is no painless path ahead when it comes to balancing this year’s budget.

In interviews this week, school board members said that they’re considering yet another increase to the pupil-teacher ratio, which would mean larger class sizes as well as significant, across-the-board cuts in order to address the nearly $100 million deficit.

“We’re at the point where you really have to choose people to leave, or programs to cut,” Holleman said. “(This survey) gives the public a chance to weigh in, and say, ‘Wait a minute, this is a big deal to me’, or ‘This is a big deal to my kid.’”

To take the survey, go online and visit: asdk12.org/Page/20281