The Anchorage House Majority Caucus on Thursday lambasted the Anchorage School District for its 2015-16 school year budget, calling it "irresponsible" and "shortsighted." On Friday, the Anchorage School Board fired back.
In a news release, School Board members said the majority caucus did not accurately reflect budget reductions already taken by the school district.
"We have done our job. It is time for the Legislature to do theirs," board member Bettye Davis, a former state senator and representative, said in the release.
The back-and-forth started after the Anchorage Assembly passed the school district's $784 million budget Tuesday, a 2.3 percent increase from this school year's total. The budget included funding for about 64 new teachers and did not include cuts to one-time education funding from Gov. Bill Walker's proposed budget.
Under legislation passed last year, the Anchorage School District was to receive an additional $31.8 million in one-time funds over three years. The funds were in addition to the Base Student Allocation, a per-student amount that provides the bulk of education funding in Alaska.
But in a letter to Anchorage School District Superintendent Ed Graff, the majority caucus asked the school district to revise its budget to reflect the Walker cuts, which would amount to $11.8 million in state and municipal funds next school year.
"It is unclear why the district would choose to overlook the governor's elimination of one-time state assistance, and we can only presume that this will result in an immediate shortfall for the district upon the passage of the state's operating budget," the letter said.
On Wednesday, the Fairbanks North Star Borough School Board sliced 60.5 jobs from the school district's budget for next fiscal year. The budget included a $3.4 million reduction from funds proposed by Walker.
Graff said Thursday that the Anchorage School District based its budget on current statute and will adjust it if the proposed cut sticks in the budget passed by the Legislature.
"Our budget this year focuses on what the students need today and it's creating support for our classrooms," he said.
The school district avoided serious cuts next school year by allocating $17 million in reserves toward the 2015-16 budget. In November, the school district announced it expected to spend roughly $22 million less this school year than it had budgeted for, largely because it did not hire as many teachers as planned.
Rep. Les Gara, D-Anchorage, said the budget process is not over and the Anchorage School District was right to wait and see what happens to the one-time funds. He said the operating budget passed by the Alaska House and supported by most of the Anchorage majority caucus hurts education.
"Anchorage is lucky to have reserves," Gara said. "This is harming other districts more than Anchorage, but it should cause people to take a pause and say, 'What are we doing to our public schools?'"
In a press release from the majority caucus Thursday, Rep. Charisse Millett, R-Anchorage, said the Legislature had worked hard "to find reasonable cuts to stem our budget deficit."
"We have the expectation that other government entities will do the same," she said. "The district can't keep its head in the sand and ignore our fiscal realities."
Eric Croft, School Board president and former state representative, wrote in a letter to the majority caucus Friday that the school district had cut 266 administrative and support positions over the past three years, while the Alaska Legislature had added employees. Croft urged the Legislature to keep the promises for one-time funding it made last year.
"As you work to cut your budget, we hope that you will focus the state's resources on the most vital areas and we hope that you will agree with many Alaskans that education should be one of those areas of focus," Croft wrote.