Anchorage's required 2027 school contribution rises to about $138 million

Anchorage has to send its school district about $138 million next year. State law sets that floor, and it went up $5.3 million from this year. The city can also choose to give another $108 million on top of it, or not, and that decision is what the next two months are about.

The administration laid out both numbers in its preliminary budget memo on Sept. 2, and was candid that it does not yet know how big a hole the district will be in. The voluntary ceiling itself depends on what the Legislature does next session.

This is the second year running that Anchorage schools have gone into budget season short. The School Board approved its operating budget in February, 5-2, against a $90 million structural deficit, and passed a plan 4-3 to close Fire Lake and Lake Otis elementary schools. In April, Mayor Suzanne LaFrance and Assembly members put a one-time $12 million education levy on the ballot to answer what the mayor called an $83 million shortfall. Voters turned it down, narrowly. State action afterward capped the required contribution and cut the remaining gap to roughly $6 million.

In August the board said it again: on a 5-2 vote, no school will close in 2026-27 primarily to save money. Kelly Lessens voted no, after the board rejected 1-6 her amendment tying that promise to full municipal funding. Without it, she said, the district will have to find the savings elsewhere. "And you know what that looks like? It looks like student opportunities."

LaFrance delivers the 2027 proposed budget Oct. 2. The Assembly introduces it Oct. 6, hears the public Oct. 20 and Nov. 4, and votes Nov. 17.