Last week, on Jan. 31, the board whittled down its list of budget-cutting scenarios from seven to three by the end of its second budget retreat of this year.
Board President Kerry Irons said during a work session on Monday, Feb. 2, that none of the options are good and two of them include closing an elementary school.
“We had programmatic cuts without a school closure. We had closed Main, including some programmatic cuts, and we had closed Peterson, including some programmatic cuts," she said.
Programmatic cuts would impact specialized staff like special education teachers, student support services like mental health services and specific academic programs. According to budget documents, not closing a school and making only these cuts would remove more than 30 district staff such as the human resources director, the auditorium director and several teachers’ aides. This option also cuts all money budgeted for the district’s activity travel fund of $45,000.
Altogether, the proposed cuts total about $3.4 million.
Graham Edwards, the non-voting Coast Guard representative on the school board, was one of a few board members who voiced support for this option at Monday night's four-hour work session and special meeting. He said that it would be better in the long run to hold off on closing a school until at least next year.
“There’s still ample opportunity to bring programs back, also cut them, but hopefully bring back," Edwards said. "If we were to close a school, we were to close Peterson, and it goes back to the Coast Guard; it’s gone. It’s gone forever. It’s never going to come back.”
Another scenario involves closing Main Elementary School and making fewer district-wide staff cuts. 200 students in fourth and fifth grades are currently taught at Main and the school has roughly ten support staff including a principal, a school nurse and a librarian. Peterson Elementary school has 195 students enrolled currently, in grades K-5. East Elementary school has 241 students in grades K-3.
Board member Mike Litzow said he favors closing a school rather than relying on programmatic cuts.
“I recognize, very strongly, the allure of the idea of tapping the brakes and trying to get through this year with programmatic cuts. I am concerned though that there’s potentially a cost to classroom education from doing that," Litzow said. "We have $3.3 million closure scenarios for Main that result in the loss of only five teacher positions across the district. We have a scenario for closing Peterson that has a loss of only two teachers across the district."
And as for the scenario that closes Peterson Elementary school, board member Duncan Fields wrote a memo ahead of Monday night’s work session opposing that school closure. Among the six reasons he listed, Fields argued that closing Peterson would reduce education quality for the school’s 195 students and send the “wrong message” to state and national decision makers.
Astriid Rose, a parent of a second and fifth grader in the school district, told the school board that the message has already been sent.
“Kodiak and all of Alaska is facing enrollment decline and long-term funding challenges. Acting as though we can shield one subset of families from that reality while everyone else bears the burden is neither equitable nor honest," she said.
All three of KIBSD’s elementary schools serve a combined total of 636 students, about 32% of the district’s student enrollment of 1,994. KIBSD’s enrollment has been declining for at least the last decade and is part of the reason the district is dealing with its current budget shortfalls.
If the board decides to close an elementary school, the consolidation scenarios involve moving 8th graders and or 7th graders into Kodiak High School and changing which grades will be taught in the remaining two elementary schools.
As of Monday, Feb. 2, the board updated their target deficit to $2.7 million instead of the roughly $4.5 million it had identified earlier this year. Fields said that’s because more intensive needs students who come with higher state funding were identified, and the district’s financial obligation for the closed North Star school is lower than expected.
The board did not take final action on next school year’s budget on Monday night. School board President Irons said the plan is to vote on it during a special meeting on Feb. 9 that immediately follows a work session focused solely on the FY’2027 budget.
