Wow! Another surprise! Is it magic? Or is it witchcraft?
The Anchorage School District announced Monday evening it had a $22 million surplus. According to some School Board members, it was a stunning revelation. They remember when, from February until late spring, the School District was running around waving its hands in the air: "The sky is falling, the sky is falling. We need more money to survive!" The usual panic and hyperbole. It happens every year. Notices go out that scads of teachers will have to be laid off. Class sizes doubled. Bus service junked. The usual morale building stuff.
School Board reaction was mixed. Kameron Perez-Verdia said the surplus presents "a really unique challenge for us as far as external communication." Is that in any language spoken or read? He clarified his statement by saying, "It?s a doozy."
Eric Croft congratulated the superintendent and his staff for being prudent, even though "the district may have cut more than we absolutely needed to."
Perhaps more witting, Pat Higgins said it was a rude surprise, wondering if he?d been sandbagged.
Who is driving this sinking boat? The district or the School Board? It should be the School Board.
Is the news of this hidden trove good or bad? It?s mixed but I think it is mostly bad. Worse, I think the School Board has been played for chumps by a school administration expert at waving one hand in the air, telling the School Board what it might like to hear, while keeping the other in the background, tweaking things out of sight. It?s neither good nor bad. It?s a travesty.
Neither the School Board nor the district appears to clearly know what its fundamental responsibilities were. The School Board abdicated them. The district skirted them. I?ve always been puzzled why the district doesn?t bring the board a budget that says, "Look, this is what we need to provide a good education for Anchorage?s kids and community." Not "adequate." Good.
And then, why the board, after munching the numbers and defining priorities, doesn't send the budget to the mayor and the Assembly with this message: "This is what we need to provide a good education, not an adequate one, a good one. It?s up to you." Hinting that there might be consequences down the line if less is settled for. I thought that was the job.
How did the ASD come up with this treasure? Maybe they pulled the wrong file and weren?t paying attention.
Get rid of experienced teachers by making life so grim that they quit as soon as they are able. Or lay them off. Replace them with less experienced people who will accept lower pay and much-reduced benefits. Then complain about the difficulties in recruiting new, good teachers. What does the human resources shop actually do over there, aside from keeping teachers in terror? And then claim it follows due process, when in fact it has no real due process plan and has admitted it.
Increase class sizes. Cut out the "frills." Short-circuit special education. Even abolish the King Career Center, as Natasha von Imhof recommended.
It sounds like a plan to destroy a school system instead of thinking hard enough to make it work.
And what does ASD want to do with a lot of this $22 million? It wants to spend about $2 million of it for studies and research into things it already should know.
And what happens to all the good, valiant people who spent so much time and their own money all last spring and still now at the Legislature trying to get some sort of sensible funding for all Alaska?s school districts, not just Anchorage's? What does this "Well, the glass isn?t really half empty; it?s half full," do to them while they try to teach legislators and the public some of life?s long words? It needlessly and recklessly disturbs their credibility.
What might a new governor who promised to do as much as possible to protect and advance education do when he discovers there is even less money available than he thought? And now might see that the problem is not as urgent as he was told it was?
Some hard questions have to be asked, emphatically and not necessarily politely, by the public to the School Board and district administrators. Now.
It?s too important to wait any longer for answers that make some kind of sense.
Jim Babb is an Anchorage attorney and former news reporter.