{"id":86276,"date":"2025-01-12T21:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-13T06:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.peninsulaclarion.com\/news\/kpbsd-launches-conversation-on-17-million-deficit\/"},"modified":"2025-01-12T21:30:00","modified_gmt":"2025-01-13T06:30:00","slug":"kpbsd-launches-conversation-on-17-million-deficit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peninsulaclarion.com\/2025\/01\/12\/kpbsd-launches-conversation-on-17-million-deficit\/","title":{"rendered":"KPBSD launches conversation on $17 million deficit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;re here. It&rsquo;s real. We&rsquo;re facing a $17 million deficit.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>That&rsquo;s what Zen Kelly, president of the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District&rsquo;s Board of Education, said during the board&rsquo;s meeting on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>During Monday&rsquo;s meeting, the board opened the conversation around its next budget, for the year beginning July 1 and running through June 2026. That budget will be tackled at school board meetings over the next several months and also at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.peninsulaclarion.com\/news\/kpbsd-to-hold-community-budget-meetings-in-homer-kenai-and-seward\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">community meetings<\/a> set for Feb. 11, 19 and 20.<\/p>\n<p>The school district last year, facing a deficit of $13.7 million, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.peninsulaclarion.com\/news\/they-deserve-better-than-this\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">approved a budget with cuts<\/a> to staffing positions, deferred payments for curriculum and equipment, and other impacts to extracurricular activities including closing pools and theaters. Those cuts <a href=\"https:\/\/www.peninsulaclarion.com\/news\/kpbsd-reverses-budget-cuts-after-dunleavy-approves-one-time-funding-increase\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">were later reversed<\/a> after the Legislature secured one-time funding, but the school district was still made to significantly draw upon its fund balance. Kelly and other members of the board said this year&rsquo;s conversations are going to be even more challenging.<\/p>\n<p>KPBSD Finance Director Liz Hayes presented a preliminary budget to the board on Monday morning, during a finance committee meeting. She projected for a static base student allocation &mdash; the amount of money each district gets from the state per student &mdash; as well as funding from the borough to the maximum amount. Revenues fall short of expenses. Salaries and benefits, per the presentation, represent around 80% of the total expenses.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;It truly is a status quo budget,&rdquo; she said.<\/p>\n<p>The projected deficit is $16.9 million. To overcome it without heavy cuts, Hayes said, would require a &ldquo;substantial increase&rdquo; to the BSA.<\/p>\n<p>During the last legislative session, a bill was passed that included an increase of $680 per student in the BSA. Gov. Mike Dunleavy <a href=\"https:\/\/www.peninsulaclarion.com\/news\/dunleavy-vetoes-bipartisan-education-bill\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">vetoed that <\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.peninsulaclarion.com\/news\/dunleavy-vetoes-bipartisan-education-bill\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">bill<\/a>, and an effort to overturn his veto <a href=\"https:\/\/www.peninsulaclarion.com\/news\/by-1-vote-lawmakers-sustain-dunleavy-veto-of-education-bill\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">failed by one vote<\/a>. KPBSD Superintendent Clayton Holland said Monday that the $680 increase wouldn&rsquo;t even be sufficient this year.<\/p>\n<p>An increase to the BSA that would match inflation since it was last meaningfully increased in 2011, he said, would total $1,808 extra per student. That doesn&rsquo;t account for the increases in health insurance costs borne by Alaska school districts, he said, but is the amount being advocated for by associations representing educators.<\/p>\n<p>Another issue voiced by the board on Monday is their need to create a balanced budget and submit it to the borough by May 1. That&rsquo;s why last year the board adopted a budget that included so many cuts to classroom sizes, programs and even staff &mdash; the increase in funding from the state that ultimately materialized was uncertain until the last week of June.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;These are drastic times,&rdquo; Holland said. &ldquo;What we&rsquo;re looking at for reductions is serious, and we have no idea &mdash; once again &mdash; where we are with a future budget from our state.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Echoing asks made by the board and by district staff last year, Holland called on legislators to come to a compromise and &ldquo;make something happen in education,&rdquo; also for people to advocate and hold their elected officials accountable.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;This is not good,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;This makes last year look easy.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>He said during the full board meeting on Monday night that cuts will have to be &ldquo;broad and deep.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>To drive the conversation around the budget, the school district will <a href=\"https:\/\/www.peninsulaclarion.com\/news\/you-are-in-deficit-new-school-district-software-lets-users-fill-budget-gaps\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">for the second year<\/a> be using &ldquo;Balancing Act,&rdquo; software accessible in a web browser that &ldquo;gamifies&rdquo; the budget. Users can make their version of a balanced budget and then submit it as feedback to the district.<\/p>\n<p>That software, as of Monday night, had not been launched publicly. Hayes said to the finance committee that she was still filling in some options, like a proposed increase of up to 10 additional students per classroom. Last year the district&rsquo;s reversed budget cuts included an increase of one student per classroom.<\/p>\n<p>Last year, people using the software overwhelmingly opted to budget for a funding increase from the state, meaning they didn&rsquo;t have to make decisions about what to cut from the budget. Hayes said that won&rsquo;t be an option this year &mdash; people will need to make the tough choices.<\/p>\n<p>Members said the software will illustrate the magnitude of the task they&rsquo;re facing. Many costs can&rsquo;t be reduced.<\/p>\n<p>Kelly said that a possible increase of 10 students per classroom &ldquo;sounds ridiculous,&rdquo; and may not be possible logistically &mdash; &ldquo;but it has to be on the table.&rdquo; Also to be discussed, he said, is school consolidation.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;That needs to be a conversation we have,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s awful &#8230; it rips communities apart and it is extremely contentious.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Many members of the board addressed the budget situation during their closing comments during Monday&rsquo;s full board meeting.<\/p>\n<p>Member Virginia Morgan said she was feeling discouraged.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s maddening that we are still in this situation,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;$17 million is a crazy number for our staff to cut.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Member Sarah Douthit said the discussion was &ldquo;a big eye-opener.&rdquo; She said she didn&rsquo;t know where the board could cut to meet the looming deficit.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s going to be real bad if we don&rsquo;t get something sorted out at the state level,&rdquo; Jason Tauriainen, board vice president, said. &ldquo;Get involved. Be ready to ask hard questions and get ready for hard answers.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Member Tim Daugharty said that the outlook seems bleak. He said that meetings with local legislators haven&rsquo;t reassured him, and he shared a newspaper clipping during the meeting dated Feb. 16, 2006, about the same budget problems &mdash; &ldquo;it could be written today.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>He said he was frustrated by the thought of doing the same song and dance, traveling to Juneau and advocating for more money. But, he said, he&rsquo;s still going to do it.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s time to go fight,&rdquo; Daugharty said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s time to go back to war again. We&rsquo;re going to be positive &#8230; We have to fight for the biggest resource that we have left in our state, and that&rsquo;s the kids.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>The district&rsquo;s community budget meetings are set for Homer, Kenai and Seward, across two weeks. On Feb. 11, a meeting will be held in the Homer High School library. On Feb. 19, a meeting will be held in the Kenai Central High School library. On Feb. 20, a meeting will be held in the Seward High School library. All three meetings are set for 6 p.m. The school board meets next on Feb. 3 at 6 p.m. in the Betty J. Glick Assembly Chambers.<\/p>\n<p>A full recording of the finance committee meeting and school board meeting will be available at the KPBSD BoardDocs website.<\/p>\n<p><em>Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@cmg-northwest2.go-vip.net\/peninsulaclarion. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The district says overcoming the deficit without heavy cuts would require a substantial increase to the BSA. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":493,"featured_media":86277,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,811],"tags":[220,115,56,183],"class_list":["post-86276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-top-news","tag-education","tag-kenai-peninsula-borough-school-district","tag-local-news","tag-schools"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>KPBSD launches conversation on $17 million deficit - Peninsula Clarion<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.peninsulaclarion.com\/2025\/01\/12\/kpbsd-launches-conversation-on-17-million-deficit\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"KPBSD launches conversation on $17 million deficit - Peninsula Clarion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The district says overcoming the deficit without heavy cuts would require a substantial increase to the BSA.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.peninsulaclarion.com\/2025\/01\/12\/kpbsd-launches-conversation-on-17-million-deficit\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Peninsula Clarion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-01-13T06:30:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.peninsulaclarion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/17\/2025\/01\/38381958_web1_KPC_011724_17Million-photos_2.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2048\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1365\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jacob Dye\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jacob Dye\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.peninsulaclarion.com\/2025\/01\/12\/kpbsd-launches-conversation-on-17-million-deficit\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.peninsulaclarion.com\/2025\/01\/12\/kpbsd-launches-conversation-on-17-million-deficit\/\",\"name\":\"KPBSD launches conversation on $17 million deficit - Peninsula Clarion\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.peninsulaclarion.com\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.peninsulaclarion.com\/2025\/01\/12\/kpbsd-launches-conversation-on-17-million-deficit\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.peninsulaclarion.com\/2025\/01\/12\/kpbsd-launches-conversation-on-17-million-deficit\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.peninsulaclarion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/17\/2025\/01\/38381958_web1_KPC_011724_17Million-photos_2.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-01-13T06:30:00+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.peninsulaclarion.com\/#\/schema\/person\/ff36f619b88897cb7b0f261d9ee96826\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.peninsulaclarion.com\/2025\/01\/12\/kpbsd-launches-conversation-on-17-million-deficit\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.peninsulaclarion.com\/2025\/01\/12\/kpbsd-launches-conversation-on-17-million-deficit\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.peninsulaclarion.com\/2025\/01\/12\/kpbsd-launches-conversation-on-17-million-deficit\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.peninsulaclarion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/17\/2025\/01\/38381958_web1_KPC_011724_17Million-photos_2.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.peninsulaclarion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/17\/2025\/01\/38381958_web1_KPC_011724_17Million-photos_2.jpg\",\"width\":2048,\"height\":1365,\"caption\":\"Tim Daugharty speaks during a meeting of the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District Board of Education in Soldotna, Alaska, on Monday, Jan. 13, 2025. 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