The Alaska Legislature passed a state budget last week without cuts to education, but the Haines Borough school board still approved a stringent 2018 budget Tuesday.
The district will take $200,000 from savings to cover next year’s $4.5 million fund budget. That reduces the balance in the district’s general fund to about $243,000. Last year’s general fund budget was $4.9 million.
Administrators estimate enrollment will be down by six students next year.
The school board for months has been expecting a possible $167,000 state funding cut and built a budget to absorb those shortfalls.
In the lurch were two special education aide positions that were cut to save the district about $104,000.
The school board voted Tuesday to put $65,000 back into the special education budget for those positions. About $40,000 was moved to a different fund to also be used for hiring in special education.
The school board also denied superintendent Tony Habra’s request for $15,000 for technology updates to buy new iPads.
“We can wait one more year on that but it’s going to put us behind in our schedule and increase the cost in the coming years,” Habra said.
“We just increased the budget by $65,000 to pay for people and I guess at this point, for me, people are more of a priority than refreshing the iPads,” said board president Anne Marie Palmieri. “Once we see how many kids are enrolled in October and we know what our needs are based on student population, we can make adjustments at that time,” she said after the meeting.
school board member Sara Swinton referenced the break in state cuts.
“I don’t want to start throwing a whole bunch of money out the door just because we might have $167,000, I don’t agree with that,” she said. “I don’t think the picture of financial stability is very rosy.”
The board denied another of Habra’s recommendations to ask the borough for $50,000 for food service and student activities.
Palmieri said the board thought it was premature to ask for additional funding without more concrete evidence that it’s needed. Numbers in those budget lines now are estimated.
“We wanted to have a better handle on what the actual numbers are,” Palmieri said. She added that if the board does decide to ask for more money in the future, she would like to see a presentation put together with budget data to show a trend of cost increases.
The school board unanimously approved the budget to submit to the state before June 30.