Anchorage School Board debates cutting $3 million from student supports

The Anchorage School Board is weighing whether to hold back $3 million meant this year for high-dose tutoring, credit recovery and school personnel, setting it aside instead to soften next year's budget deficit. Board member Rachel Blakeslee said the original $3.7 million "was supposed to support both high-dose tutoring, additional credit recovery opportunities, and personnel to support schools, which includes, in all the examples, paraprofessionals, holdback teachers, substitutes, counselors, and other position needs." Superintendent Jharrett Bryantt confirmed the money was designed to be flexible. The board debated the substitute at a work session Tuesday and was scheduled to take it up at its 6 p.m. meeting.

The substitute, sponsored by Board President Carl Jacobs and member Kelly Lessens, cuts student supports to $700,000 and lowers spending authority. "The recommendation decreases each of the amounts that you see before you by $3 million," Lessens said, taking the upper limit from $896 million to $893 million. The remaining $700,000 would cover tutoring, credit recovery and contracted services with the Anchorage School-Based Health Center, which estimates a roughly $50,000 second-semester need. The amendment would obligate $20,608,000 to preserve about 144 teaching positions, including the middle school model.

Bryantt's original plan for roughly $32 million in one-time waterfall money from the Alaska Legislature retained $17.61 million to pull the FY28 gap down from about $40 million to $26 million. An August district update put the projected FY28 deficit above $45 million.

Lessens said staffing figures shared Sept. 4 show the money would be hard to convert into teachers. Of 66 positions principals posted, only 16 were genuinely new hires. The rest were filled by substitutes, transfers and retire-rehires. The district also reported 59 teachers on J-1 visas and 106 under alternative certificates. Vincent Lang said elementary vacancies now go unfilled, "and that's really a sea change because you go back 10 or 20 years and for every vacancy in elementary there were, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50 viable candidates."

Chief Financial Officer Andy Ratliff said treating the additions as nonrecurring "gets to an estimated deficit of about $6 million if you consider all this stuff to be non-recurring," but added it would cost schools holdback teachers and activities.

Board member Dora Wilson backed saving the money: "I'm worried that if we use every penny again this year, that next year is going to be a, again, a huge blow." Board member Paul McDonough disagreed. "I cannot make out the business case that this is a stronger proposal than the regular," he said, urging colleagues to trust the superintendent's hiring plan and debate only spending now versus cutting the deficit. Districts statewide face similar structural deficits amid rising costs and one-time state funding.