During the roughly four-hour-long work session Monday, Jan. 5, the school district’s board of education leaned in a direction to fill a multi-million-dollar budget shortfall for the upcoming school year, fiscal year 2027.
“And so I’d like to move on from the meeting tonight focusing on cuts and not continue to have that shadow and threat that we’re also going to close a school," Duncan Fields said.
Fields is one of five board members on the Kodiak Island Borough School District’s board of education. And that was the board’s tentative consensus on Monday. Instead of closing another school to close the budget gap like last year, this time it plans to cut staff, student activities and other programs.
Superintendent Cyndy Mika told the board on Jan. 5 which positions she thinks could be cut and which ones should not.
“If you did away with the activities director, who’s going to do that? It’s going to have to be your high school and middle school administrators," she told the board.
Mika suggested the activities director be taken off the chopping block along with the rural schools principal, the assistant superintendent, and elementary music and PE teachers. Dozens of other positions remained on the possible cut list, like school nurses.
"So currently we have a nurse and a half at the high school budgeted. We actually had the .5 resigned mid-year and so that’s currently not filled," Mika said. "And then we have a nurse at each of our other campuses. So, looking at the nurses and, can we share nurses between buildings? I think that we can.”
Amanda Knutzen, a teacher at Peterson Elementary, pointed out that many of the teachers and staff who are in these positions hold multiple roles within the school district.
“On your guys’ list as possible program reductions are secretary 1s, Aide 2s and librarians. At least at Peterson, those are all the people that run lunch duty," Knutzen said. "That would leave just our counselor to do lunch duty and would probably force our secretary 2 out of the office, leaving nobody in the office to answer the door or answer the phone.”
No final decisions about staffing or program cuts were made during Monday’s work session.
At this point in the budget process, the board only has estimates to work with: estimates of its revenue, estimates of its expenses and estimates of next year’s enrollment. Because of that uncertainty, the budget deficit is a moving target. After Monday’s meeting on Jan. 5, the board is aiming to close a $4.55 million gap. Declining student enrollment, rising teacher insurance costs and other factors are the main drivers for the budget shortfall.
Regardless of what cuts the board does make, Mika said she opposes using the district’s remaining savings to help balance the budget. So far this school year, the school district is committed to use $5.2 million from its fund balance.
“That’s been my whole premise going into this budget year, is we cannot use fund balance to balance this budget like we have in the past," Mika said. "It’s just, we can’t continue doing that. We don’t have it and what we do have, it needs to be for emergencies.”
As of Monday, Mika had projected $1.15 million will be left in the school district’s fund balance going into the 2026-2027 school year, which starts in the fall.
The largest chunk of the district’s expenses is employee salaries and benefits, totaling $33 million out of the $42.5 the school district has budgeted for personnel related expenses this school year. For the upcoming fiscal year FY’2027, which begins on July 1, the district is estimating $800,000 more in personnel costs.
Non-personnel costs for the current fiscal year are around $9.5 million. Nearly half of that, $4,591,374, was spent on utilities and energy costs, which the district sees as mostly fixed. $1.6 million covered supplies, materials and media, while $1.25 million went to “other purchased services”.
According to the school district’s timeline, the board of education plans to take final action on the upcoming fiscal year budget on Jan. 19. In the meantime, the community can provide feedback in an online survey and at a town hall meeting next week on Jan. 15.
