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Thank you.

The Anchorage School District is facing an enormous budget deficit.

Proposed cuts include closing up to six schools.

I think that she will probably end up going to private or homeschool if this program.

Discontinues.

Because it's not just the curriculum, it's the culture in this school.

What else do district leaders have planned for resolving the funding crisis?

And is there a chance state leaders could help close the gap?

We'll discuss it right now on Alaska INSIGHT.

Good evening.

Beyond educating students, neighborhood schools bring families together for athletic events, fundraisers and parent teacher discussions.

They are often the glue that keeps a community connected.

How does it affect families, student friendships, teacher mentoring and entire neighborhood?

It's when a school closes.

These questions are in front of many Anchorage families right now, as Anchorage school district officials work to resolve a deep budget shortfall.

We'll hear more about ideas for stabilizing district funds from families and education advocates this evening.

But before we get to that discussion, we'll start off with some of the top stories of the week from Alaska Public Media's collaborative statewide news network.

Alaska held its first ranked choice general election on Tuesday.

We don't have final results yet, but the state division of elections started releasing batches of results Tuesday night.

The count so far includes just first place votes and it will be updated in coming days.

As more mail ballots are received.

A candidate can win outright if he or she receives more than 50% of first place votes.

If not, it goes to the ranked choice tabulation.

That tabulation happens on Wednesday, November 23rd.

So far, it appears that Governor Mike Dunleavy will retain his position as the state's top executive.

Dunleavy has more than 52% of first round votes in the U.S. Senate race.

Republican Kelly Tshibaka is leading with just over 44% of the vote, while incumbent Lisa Murkowski has just under 43%.

And in the U.S. House race, incumbent Democrat Mary Peltola has a sizable lead in first round votes.

Peltola has more than 47% Republican.

Sarah Palin has nearly 27%, and Republican Nick Begich has 24%.

Ballot Measure one was defeated.

The question asked every decade was whether Alaskans wanted to hold another constitutional convention.

Nearly 70% of Alaskans said no.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard a case this week that presents a major challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act equa, as it's known, is a federal law that allows tribes to make adoption decisions for native children, to keep them connected to their culture and to keep native families intact.

The non-native plaintiffs taking their case to the Supreme Court say that's unconstitutional and racial discrimination.

It's not known when the high court will render a decision in that case.

The families of the victims of a 2020 midair crash over Soldotna have reached a settlement, putting to rest a set of several lawsuits over the collision that killed then State Representative Gary Knapp and six other people.

The settlement comes more than two years after the Republican lawmakers private plane collided with a charter plane in July of 2020, killing the four passengers guide and pilot aboard.

The terms of the settlement reached weeks ago.

are confidential.

The complaint alleged Knapp was negligent since he was flying without a medical certification.

Kanab was denied a certification in 2012 due to vision problems.

You can find the full versions of these stories and many more on our website, Alaska Public dot org or by downloading the Alaska Public Media App on your phone.

Now on to our discussion for this evening.

Anchorage school district administrators have proposed closing six schools next year as a way to cut costs amid a $68 million budget deficit.

At town hall meetings, parents have asked administrators to take their kids schools off that list.

As Alaska Public Media's Katie Anastas reports, one elementary school community worries they will lose access to their school's rigorous curriculum.

The Anchorage Basic Curriculum, or ABC, focuses on core math and reading skills.

It also encourages leadership, self-discipline and character development.

That's what drew Robin Gable to Birchwood, ABC Elementary School.

Her daughter is now in kindergarten.

Birchwood stood out like.

A unicorn as.

Far as.

Curriculum is concerned and character.

And values that are reinforced.

And so it was the only reason I felt comfortable even sending my kid to this district.

Birchwood has some of the strongest math and reading scores in the district, but its enrollment has dropped in recent years, and now it's at 51% capacity.

That's why it ended up on a list of six schools the district could close next year as it deals with a $68 million deficit.

Administrators have proposed moving Birch Woods ABC program to Homestead Elementary seven miles away.

But Gable worries that sharing a building with another school could put those high scores at risk.

And she says she'll consider other options for her daughter.

I think that she will probably end up going to private or homeschool if this program.

Discontinues.

Because it's not just the curriculum, it's the culture in this school.

At a town hall meeting Thursday night, more than a dozen parents spoke passionately against closing their school.

Why should we not be instrumenting all of the what is taught here?

What Mr. Thomas and the rest of these teachers are doing into all of the other struggling, dismal schools in this district?

Why choose to close our school when our.

School is your goal?

The curriculum and culture are important to the teachers, too.

Holly Booth teaches second and third grade and graduated from Birchwood herself.

I totally believe.

In this program like 100% believe in it.

And I really feel like it also prepared me as a student to be successful in life.

But Booth has also seen firsthand how lower enrollment is impacting classes.

She's teaching a combination second and third grade class this year because there aren't enough students to create separate classes.

The way our program runs.

It's very direct instruction, and so it's.

Challenging.

To meet those needs in a combo class.

But because of declining enrollment this year, I think we have the most combo classes that we've ever had.

And it is challenging.

District wide enrollment has dropped by 5000 students over the last ten years, and the best student allocation the amount of money per student school districts received from the state hasn't substantially increased since 2017.

Principal Michael Thomas says he understands why many parents think the strong academic outcomes should be enough to keep Birchwood open.

But ultimately he understands that the district is in a tough spot.

We can't take schools at 51% capacity, 60% capacity and continue to operate them effectively or even fiscally responsibly with that.

Along with school closures, the district has presented the school board with proposed cuts to language immersion programs, sports and the district's main gifted program.

Jamie Anderson, the district's chief financial officer, says he knows it will be a tough choice.

Every single thing we've brought up really, truly is absolutely critical and important to some group of students and families.

Almost everyone in Anchorage would agree that we should be an efficient organization.

They also, almost everyone would agree that we should be efficient in some of their program besides mine or in some other school besides mine.

And that's the challenge the board has.

The school board will vote on December 19th whether to include the school closures in its proposed budget.

Reporting in Anchorage, I'm Katie Anastas.

Joining me tonight to discuss the deficit and the various ideas for how to resolve it is Anchorage School Board member Dave Donley.

Also with us this evening is Elise Galvin with the group Great Alaska Schools.

And Ms.. Galvin appears to be the newly elected representative for House District 14, having garnered more than 65% of first round votes.

Thank you both for joining me this evening, and welcome.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here.

Thank you.

Glad to be here.

Before we start school, district policy requires me to disclaim that I'm speaking only for myself and not for the Anchorage School Board or the Anchorage School District.

All right.

Well, thank you for clarifying that.

I do want to start with you, Dave.

Talk about the work that you mentioned in a previous interview in the late nineties on school district funding and what needs to happen to update that formula?

Formula.

District cost differential hasn't been adjusted in.

I believe you said, six years.

How much would that help ASD and how would it affect other districts in the state?

Well, the district cost differential is the second factor in the funding formula that the school the funding law, the state funding law is essentially a mathematical equation.

We worked on it very hard back then.

Actually, we were told that we were it would never be possible to even get it passed.

But for the first time, we got through a formula that was based on data and the actual cost of delivering education in Alaska.

And the second factor in the formula, the first factor here is school size.

The second factor is the district cost differential.

In other words, the geographical difference in providing education services in different regions of Alaska is quite dramatic.

So the state hired the University of Alaska's Iwsr, the Social and Economic Research folks to do an analysis of the distinctions, the differential in the cost of delivering education statewide.

But that hasn't been updated for much too long a time.

And the evidence now indicates that Anchorage students are being shortchanged from the education total spending as much as $30 million a year.

You, you know, as we noted earlier, big budget deficit, 5000 fewer students in the last decade.

You noted that nearly 90% of spending is salaries and said that even if we eliminated food service, non classroom related expenses and increased class size by five students each, that still wouldn't be enough to close a gap.

It would get you less than half the way there.

Correct.

Well, the calculations for the advantages of closing down schools is been a moving one.

The initial estimates from the school district and I will point out that the entire school closing schools plan was developed by the administration, not the school board.

The school board was not a participant in designing the current plan.

That's going out to the public for comment, and it hasn't been approved yet, and it will take a vote of the school board to actually approve that plan.

But that the estimates that have been coming in from how much we would be saving per school are evolving over time as more and more factors are considered and taken into consideration.

And also the repurposing of schools is going to have an impact upon what those savings are when given all that is because most of our topic today is the specifics.

It is one of the most significant budget deficits I've ever seen in 22 years of elected office and I served as co-chair of the Senate Finance Committee when Price's oil prices were down in the teens.

And this is actually a much greater percentage of the total budget than we faced at that time on the state level.

All right.

Thank you for getting us started here.

Elise, you also mentioned what would happen if the deficit was closed by reducing staff.

It would number in the thousands.

That's staggering.

What would that mean for the Anchorage School District?

Well, I think we've already alluded Dave mentioned the class size would be up at least plus five, and that's only fixing half of that.

So I think doubling that.

And I think we need to appreciate the bigger discussion, which is if not close the schools, then what?

Right that there is this deficit, what can we do?

Is that the only solution?

We know that the state has yet to make their decisions about how much money will be allocated to districts.

And, you know, Dave has one idea that too interesting to relook at the formula.

I know that we've tried that in the past.

It stirs up a lot of lawsuits and frankly, we may need to look at that formula, though, to be to be fair to all students in Alaska.

Wrangell, for example, likely is not getting its fair share either.

But it's going to open up a can of worms.

That's going to be a real messy decision.

Basically what that's doing is stirring the money around.

Right.

We're going to try to get Anchorage some more money as a state legislator.

Hope to be.

I hope that I can look at the bigger picture of the fact that we have not been allocating enough funds to keep up with the costs of education.

Some things are fixed and some are not right.

We know, for example, if we have contracts in place for teachers what their salary is going to be.

But just like all of the businesses suffering today, we're seeing this now in our education school.

Right.

So if we know that costs have gone up year after year, the BSA, the base student allocation has not kept up whatsoever with the costs of education.

And it's so many things that I wish the public would better understand, like the cost of health care for teachers in education.

Fuel, all of those things.

You name it, every patient.

Is affected.

Everything, just like businesses are dealing with.

And so so because we haven't kept up.

Folks like Dave Donnelly in the school board have had to trim, trim, trim each year.

And and now they're looking at I think the administration said, okay, I'll give you some ideas.

We can cut these schools and that'll give us some we can cut out.

I think we've heard about the language immersion classes that those classes we can cut out admin is only at 1%.

So when you hear all the rhetoric around admin, that's not too much to save.

Orchestras being tossed around, sports hockey, you know, all kinds of things around class sizes.

So it's tough.

You know, as we talked about earlier, the election results aren't yet final, but you appear to have won your House race by a wide margin and are heading to Juneau for the next legislative session.

Governor Dunleavy appears to be heading back to Juneau as well.

What do you think that will mean for how state lawmakers and the governor may work together on what this and how this discussion may.

Look in his.

Next session?

I'm very hopeful.

We still don't have the results in, like you mentioned it, not until the 23rd.

But I think if you look at the slate of those who are running and especially in the tight races, many of them are retired teachers or somehow related to the education system.

Now, if they get elected, I think it may send a message to all legislators that this is really a concern, a deep concern for Alaskans.

I know that the governor did work on a bipartisan education bill last cycle.

And so I think he's interested, of course, in education.

But whether or not we can drive in more that we're looking at improving, flowing all boats, so to speak, for every student to be able to do better and and have an opportunity to to get a quality education like the and the Constitution says.

So there's work to be done.

Dave, you said school districts need to show increased accountability to the legislature.

What does that mean?

What what is that accountability that you think is needed?

Oh, school districts all over the state have been lobbying for years for an increase to the basic student allocation.

But what has been missing, I think politically, is a commitment to greater accountable ity for what the districts themselves are, how they're delivering educational services.

And that's a very important element to a lot of legislators consideration of providing additional funds, increased funds to for schools in Alaska.

They want more accountability.

They want results for the funds that they invest in education.

And so I think it's a challenge for districts statewide to try to find ways to provide that accountability.

Guess if I could offer an answer to that as well.

We have ESEA, which is a lot of accountability through the federal system.

So there are mechanisms there.

But I would say that we need to add more because we don't have the public trust in the public service of education, which is so critical.

And I don't really agree with the approach that we say show me the results, in fact.

And a new legislator getting in a representative from Sardauna, a Republican, he says that, you know, we really need to focus on making sure that our educators have the tools necessary to do well first.

And then we look at multiple things.

Testing is one, but also how are our kids getting jobs?

Are they getting the skills they need for the higher paying jobs?

You know, all those pieces that we know as a community matter to us.

Are they staying here?

Are they are they good community citizens and all of that?

So I think we do have some work to do to build more trust in public education.

And I think we're we're getting to that point where folks are seeing this reckoning, so to speak.

Mm hmm.

And following up on that, I want both of you to answer this.

Dave, I'll go to you first.

For people who don't have children in school and feel like I want to pay for keeping schools solvent, how do you help them understand the ripple effect that declining schools can have on the local community, the local economy overall?

What do you say to them?

Well, I'd start with the fundamentals.

I mean, this nation simply cannot function as a constitutional republic without an educated populace.

It's democracy in a Republican reform of government require educated, involved citizenship, and the public schools are essential for that.

I support you know, Alaska is very supportive of parent choice, being able to homeschool or go to private schools.

But we will always be in a need for a good public school system.

And that's the first step.

The first argument I would make to folks that are concerned that they don't have a stake in public education.

The second is just we've already the Lisa's already mentioned, we need to be graduating kids that are ready for life, that are able to take a job, do math, make logic, use logic, make good decisions in life, and they will become citizens.

And that makes healthy communities healthy citizens graduating from your schools.

Real results in healthier communities.

All right.

Elise, I want to have you follow up there, too.

But you said we need to start thinking outside of the box, making bold moves politically.

You're going to Juno.

What would those bold moves be and what will you propose while you're there?

You had mentioned that you think lawmakers have a deficit mindset.

And so we've heard for years, even most recently, unfortunately, from our state leadership and the executive branch, that we just need to shrink up our our population here.

It's a deficit mindset instead of thinking, no, actually we need to grow Alaska.

We need to make sure that our 18 to 40 year old stay in Alaska, we've just gotten a report, I'm sure you've reported it out, that we've lost 34%, one in three of our 18 to 40 year olds.

These are the people who will be taking care of you and me.

We need them to stay here.

We need them to see a future.

We need them to be able to afford housing, to be able to have the skills for the great jobs that Dave alluded to as well.

We need to have a different mindset that says actually, Alaska is the best place to live, work and play and we need to set ourselves up for it, which means an investment in this, our seed corn, so to speak.

Our seed corn.

What is that?

That's our children from Cradle Four, right?

When they're born is really where we're seeing.

We need to have more supports around that so that our children, when they arrive at kindergarten, are ready for that.

Learning.

And right now, more than two thirds are not ready.

So there's a lot of new thinking about this.

And honestly, the research has been there for 30 to 40 years around that.

But when we're at 50% capacity in a school, while this may be an opportunity for us to be looking at early learning and using those schools as places and not shutting them down, but sharing so that we can have the early learning that we know our our state has been needing for a long time.

So that's one thing.

The other is a defined benefit.

Of course, everybody's been talking about this, but in Alaska, we have the worst opportunity for our new teachers coming in, the ones we want to stay long term.

If they can't see their way to a retirement, why would they stay?

So they they're here for about five years to their salary goes up and then they leave.

We have to change that whole algorithm so that we know that we're actually investing in the long term future for our education system.

So we only have a couple of minutes left.

Mr. Donnelly, what would your top three priorities be if if you could put in place what you think needs to happen to to help resolve this very, very serious deficit?

Well, before we go to the deficit, I'd just like to mention that as an ABC parent for my twins went to an ABC school.

I really empathize with the folks out at Birchwood because they're a very high performing school because of the curriculum that ABC Schools use.

And I've advocated for five years now that we expand that curriculum and begin an incremental process of expanding that in other schools in the district.

And that's going to increase accountability, which will increase the case of local school districts to the legislature for additional funds.

But I would say my top priority at this time is that area cost is the district, the cost differential.

Getting a new study done that can be implemented, it's going to take a couple of years to do that.

It's just really unfair to Anchorage students right now where they're being unfairly discriminated against in a very objective way because that differential hasn't been updated in so many years.

So that would be number one.

Yeah, in about 30 seconds, what would you what would your top priority be or will it.

Oh, boy.

First of all, we need to find ways to shore up our giant deficit for now.

To respond to Dave's wondered, I'll comment around ABC Schools.

Yes, they're wonderful.

But we also know other schools are also doing very well.

So I want to make sure that we comment that we need to keep local control.

Folks in their communities should be deciding which programs are working well for them.

And we need to make sure every child has an opportunity to to succeed.

So a long term plan would be can we do some two year budgeting for so that school systems aren't going through this every time, getting out a little bit more?

Can we shore up our defined benefit so that recruitment retention costs aren't exorbitant.

All right.

Which are huge and many more.

All right.

Thank you both so much for being available this evening.

Quality education affects everything and everyone.

For Alaska to thrive into the future, we need robust education programs that help young Alaskans want to stay in their home state and have a bright future with a solid career.

Good schools also help attract young professionals to our state who need to know their children will get a good education here.

As you heard this evening, it's a complicated problem, but it's one that we should all be concerned about for Alaska's future, whether we have children in classrooms or not.

That's it for this edition of Alaska Insight.

Visit our website, Alaska Public dot org for breaking news and reports from across the state.

While you're there, sign up for our Daily Digest so you won't miss any of Alaska's top stories of the day.

Thanks for joining us this evening.

I'm Lori Townsend.

Good night.