The U.S. Department of Education usually issues several grants by July 1. But this year, it froze $6.8 billion in education grants ahead of the school year.
The biggest hit to the Kodiak Island Borough School District is a $900,000 grant that supports fishing families. Cyndy Mika, the district’s superintendent, said the money is part of the migrant education fund grant, which pays for reading and math interventionists in every school, including in the villages.
"We also pay for the totes on the boats program so that when they go fishing for the summer, they can take educational materials with them,” she said. “We also pay for swimming passes for the year because we know how important it is for our families with students on boats for the students to know how to swim well.”
Mika said that grant mainly benefits Kodiak residents that leave the archipelago for commercial and subsistence fishing or hunting. But if the funding doesn’t come through, the district can’t offer it this upcoming school year.
Other programs taking hits from the federal funding freeze include the district’s professional development, advanced academics, and English Language Learning. In all, the frozen funds mean the district is short $1,161,153 from the budget it already approved.
“There’s no way to absorb it – there’s no way to continue the programs without the money,” Mika said.
This is just the latest blow in a difficult year for district officials.
The school board voted to close a school as it faced an $8 million budget gap in January. Kodiak officials ended up passing a budget that drains its fund balance, or savings, to avoid layoffs. And in May, the Alaska State Legislature approved a $700 per-student increase to the state's Base Student Allocation, or its education funding model. But Governor Mike Dunleavy cut that down to $500 per student in June.
“Everything coupled together, it’s very significant for the school district – and at a late date,”Mika said. The district planned to submit its budget to the state on July 10.
A grant to Kodiak College that also benefits fishing families worth nearly half a million dollars was also frozen, as well as the funds for its GED program.
Mika said she’s had conversations with other superintendents and educators around the state as well as the Alaska commissioner of education, Deena Bishop, but no one has any answers.
“Is there uncertainty? Yes. Do we know anything? No. Do we know a timeline? It’s nonexistent. Do we know if the money’s gonna come? No,” Mika told KMXT.
What Mika does know is that the district doesn’t have the money to take that million-dollar hit this late in the budgeting process.
She immediately put the district on a hiring freeze to help buy some time to figure out a longer-term plan. Less than half of her regular team is in to help right now too, with four central office staff taking time off this summer.
“I need to be able to look at the people that are already employed by the district and look at the current openings we have, and that’s going to take time,” Mika said. As you can imagine, this is the worst possible time for this to happen – CO is bare bones.”
Mika said the only way the community can help now is to contact government officials.
“The U.S. Department of Education is the one withholding this amount of money,” she said. “Write letters to them and then write letters to our governor. Beyond that, I don’t know what to do, what our community can do.”
School district staff return August 4. Students return September 2.
