Faced with a $474,000 reduction in state funding from last year, the Wrangell School District found several ways to cut the budget for the 2022-2023 school year.
State funding is based on enrollment, and Wrangell’s count is down about 50 students — more than 15% — from before the pandemic. The district lost students to homeschooling and enrollment in correspondence schools in 2020.
The district this year did not fill a vacant teaching position at the middle school, in addition to adopting a budget that assumes less spending on substitute teachers, Tammy Stromberg, the district’s business manager, said last week.
“Whether that’s realistic, we’ll find out,” she said. “We had to budget for a lot of substitutes last year due to COVID.” The district hopes to save about $30,000 this year by needing fewer substitute teachers.
A $40,000 reduction in liability and property insurance premiums also helped, Stromberg said. As did ordering a lot of school supplies for this year under the 2021-2022 budget, helping to accommodate the drop in revenues for 2022-2023, Stromberg explained.
The district also cut its spending plan for student activities by $50,000, about 20%, for this year, hoping to raise the money outside of the school. “We didn’t do a very good job of fundraising last year,” she said in an interview last Thursday.
Another budget savings for this year, Stromberg said, was eliminating a full-time position that included duties as the district’s activities director and other work at the schools and instead hiring a part-time activities director, who will not receive benefits with the job.
The school board will review the budget in September and could make any needed revisions, she said.
The district’s 2022-2023 general fund spending plan totals $5.044 million, down from last year’s $5.914 million. State funding, which is based on enrollment, will cover 64% of this year’s budget, or $3.241 million. Borough funding, at $1.617 million, is $300,000 above last year — the most ever approved by the borough assembly. Federal funds make up the difference in the overall school district budget.
The borough funding is at the maximum allowed under state law, which sets a minimum and maximum formula for local contributions in an effort to prevent too much inequity between communities.
The district received about $1 million in federal pandemic relief aid over the past two years, but that money, which the schools have used to fill revenue gaps and are now using to help cover salaries, will run out after the 2023-2024 school year.
The Wrangell district is budgeted to end the fiscal year next June 30 with $503,000 in its reserves, down substantially from $1.18 million on June 30, 2021.
School districts across the state have argued unsuccessfully for an increase in the state’s per-student funding formula, which has not changed since 2017, and will try again next year to convince legislators and the governor of the need for more help.
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