The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District and the Kenai Peninsula Borough held a second joint work session to discuss the Fiscal Year 2022 budget. This meeting follows a February 2nd joint work session between the two sides regarding education funding for the school district. The funding level Kenai Peninsula Borough will be able to provide to the School District for FY22 is expected to be under the maximum allowable amount. The current budget is based on the maximum allowable funding from the borough of just over $53 million.
Pegge Erkeneff, Director of Communications, Community and Government Relations for the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District spoke to KSRM, “Our board of education met with the finance committee on Monday and went over all of our budgeting information as we’re planning for the school year that begins in August and the fiscal year that begins July 1st. They also met again as a full board all morning prior to meeting with the borough assembly and borough administration. During a joint work session the school board president did say that we’re prioritizing what we see as most important and right now that’s our youth and what they need for learning. A couple things that we’re facing that are really different this year that were talked about during that joint work session were around enrollment for the school district. Because of the pandemic, a lot of students didn’t go to school this year at the schools. Our enrollment is down and we anticipate some of those children will come back. We’re going to be doing virtual enrollment in April because we’re needing to get contracts now so we can plan for those students. Really, realistically, looking at what the Borough’s finances are and what the school district’s finances are and what level of quality education we want to provide on the Kenai Peninsula which also attracts families and people to live here.”
A tier cut list was presented for review. Erkeneff goes into detail what the list might entail, “That might be larger class sizes versus taking a few days away from our school secretaries that’s on the list when they already need every single hour at their school and even more so if we’ll be adding summer school and some different things. There was a big discussion about that list and it’s not a given that when people see that list that’s what would happen at all.”
Erkeneff provides an early projection of the FY21 Fund Balance, “We have a deficit. We’ve dipped into all of our savings and we’re dipping into the savings or, what we would call a designated fund balance that we can use but no more than a third, a third and a third over a three-year period. We’re dipping into that already and we’re waiting to hear what the borough will set as the minimum.”
