The school board has adopted a budget for the next school year that relies heavily on funds from two different reserve accounts to balance revenue with expenses.
By withdrawing $976,000 from its operating reserves — just about emptying the longstanding account — and transferring $250,000 from its capital improvement projects reserves, the school district is able to cover its $5.98 million operating budget.
The 2025-2026 spending plan includes two fewer full-time teaching positions than this year.
Any increase in state funding for schools would boost the district’s finances — which have been tight the past several years — reducing its need to drain its operating reserves account.
The Alaska Legislature has approved an increase in the state’s per-pupil base funding formula, which if allowed to become law by Gov. Mike Dunleavy, would send more than $400,000 in additional state money to Wrangell.
But even if the state money arrives for next year, the district would have just a year left in its operating reserve account at its current rate of spending and revenues.
The school board approved the budget in a unanimous vote on April 30, a day ahead of the legal deadline to submit its spending plan to the borough. The assembly cannot change the budget; its only role is to determine the local contribution for schools.
There was no discussion by board members before the vote. The meeting lasted about seven minutes.
Based on conversations with borough officials, school district administrators built next year’s budget on a local contribution of $1.4 million, which is a small increase from this year. The budget also includes about $3.18 million from the state and $1.22 million from the two reserves.
The borough’s ability to help fund the schools was diminished late last year when Congress failed to reauthorize the 25-year-old Secure Rural Schools program which provided money for schools and roads in communities hit by the decline of the timber industry. Wrangell had been expecting about $800,000 a year under the program.
The district budget assumes 260 students enrolled in K-12, the same as this year. That is down from just over 300 in 2019, before losing students to homeschooling and correspondence programs at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and as the town has steadily lost population.
State funding is based on student enrollment numbers.
A decline in specific, program-directed state and federal funds resulted in the district not offering contracts to two teachers for next year.
The district is eliminating its preschool program due to fewer special-needs students expected to enroll next year. “It was for a specific purpose,” Superintendent Bill Burr explained of the preschool program. Fewer special-needs children means less state money.
The preschool teacher, Alyssa Howell, who is tenured, next year will teach second grade, where she started with the district in 2022.
This year’s second-grade teacher, Madison Blackburn, who has been with the district for two years, is not tenured and was not offered a contract for the 2025-2026 school year.
A second teacher without tenure, Odile Meister, also was not offered a contract for next year. Her full-time position was funded the past two years with federal dollars under what’s known as the Title I program. That money is given to Wrangell because of its high percentage of economically disadvantaged families, and to assist students who move around during the year, such as commercial fishing families.
The Title 1 program is designed “to help at-risk students who are at a disadvantage,” according to the school district website. “We work with students on their reading, writing and math fluency. The setting for our Title 1 groups are small groups and/or one on one.”
A decline in that federal money “is making it very difficult to continue” the program with a full-time teacher, Schools Superintendent Bill Burr said. “We knew the funding would slowly trickle down.”
With the loss of a full-time certificated teacher to assist students, the superintendent said the district will return to part-time staff to help students with math and reading skills.
Because Meister also taught Spanish at the high school, her departure likely will mean the loss of an in-person foreign class in Wrangell.
“We don’t have anyone else,” Burr said.
Meister has reported that she had 18 students in her second-year Spanish class this semester.
The district will look at remote, online instruction, particularly for students who have taken the first year of Spanish and want to finish a second year to meet the entrance requirement at many colleges, Burr said.
The district will continue to offer a class in the Tlingit language.
The school board last month appointed a 10-person special committee to look at options for a long-term budget plan, including consolidating schools, moving to a four-day school week and other possibilities to save money.
The committee held its first meeting April 29, with a second scheduled for Tuesday, May 6.
School Board President Dave Wilson named Aaron Angerman chair of the committee on April 29.
The committee is due to present a report to the school board in August.
In addition to facing a long-term budget problem, the district is recruiting for a new superintendent; Burr is leaving his job next month.
The school board is scheduled to meet at 5 p.m. Wednesday, May 7, at Evergreen Elementary School to select finalists for the job. The board has scheduled an executive session for the superintendent search. State law prohibits any decisions in closed sessions, requiring the board to come back into public session to vote on any actions.
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