Saturday Night Live used to have a great segment called "Really?" I actually said it out loud while reading the paper one morning this week: "Really?" The Anchorage School District, one month after announcing it was considering school closures, now has a substantial $22 million dollar budget surplus. What drunken sailor is at the helm of this ship?
As a devoted member of Great Alaska Schools, a grassroots volunteer organization working for quality schools in Alaska, I can't see a rosy picture in this scenario, and here's why. The reason for the "surplus" is that ASD has begun a death spiral of losing teachers it can't replace. Pink slips were issued before the Legislature had finalized school funding, and many teachers were too far along in their job search by the time they were recalled.
Compounding this problem, our salary and benefits package in the ASD is not competitive enough to attract new teachers. Additionally, some teachers close to retirement are tired of the continual displacements and increasing class sizes, and are choosing to retire early.
We hear of the serious results of recent budget cuts from all points in the Anchorage School District:
• Graduation support counselors are gone from every high school;
• Rogers Park Elementary has no working computer lab, so students there can't access the online learn-to-read program called Lexia or do other computer-based work;
• Eagle River High School's choir teacher is gone;
* Gone also are Bartlett High School's business or home economics classes;
• In some schools classes are taught entirely by substitute teachers due to inadequate staffing;
• The Middle School model has been partially dismantled;
And the list goes on and on.
Anchorage School District Superintendent Ed Graff credits the surplus to fiscally conservative business practices used to manage the district's finances. I say we should credit the windfall to mismanagement at the Anchorage School District, where we saw fervent dismantling of good programs, good teachers being jettisoned, even some essential elements like elementary school computer labs being lost, all undertaken to such a degree that we "saved" this money.
Superintendent Graff says he intends to roll over these funds to offset the expected shortfall in next year's budget. Great Alaska Schools thinks we should repair essential education elements damaged in our overzealous budget cutting, focusing on the core values and goals of the Anchorage School District, including meeting each child's needs and striving toward a 90 percent graduation rate by 2020.
Suzanne Little is a founding member of Great Alaska Schools, a grassroots organization begun early in 2014 to shore up state funding for public schools in Anchorage and the rest of Alaska. She lives in Anchorage.
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, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com.