News-Miner Community Perspective:
Public education is a value-added endeavor. School districts do more than teach academic subjects. We provide services to the whole child. Those services meet not only student, family and community needs, but also state and federal requirements. Schools in the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District are supported by services that include counseling, nursing, secretarial, custodial, administration, coaching, behavior intervention, prevention and intervention, curriculum, payroll, human resources, federal programs, professional development and more. Every school district system in Alaska requires these types of supports to function effectively for their communities and also to meet state and federal requirements.
Alaska superintendents recognize the need to “tighten the belt” during these fiscally challenging times facing our state. For most of us, however, flat funding from both local municipalities and the state already represents a significant level of cuts. Fairbanks experiences annual cost increases that include salary obligations, utilities, student transportation, and nutrition services. Those increases require cuts elsewhere when funding is flat. Before we even begin the conversation about local contribution or the state base student allocation, we are faced with expenditure increases totaling more than $4 million, or approximately 2 percent of our annual operating budget. In addition, we will have an automatic reduction in state revenue of almost $1 million because of decreased enrollment.
This article originally appeared on Daily News-Miner, Fairbanks. Read teh full article here.