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Open letter from Superintendent Comeau on education funding

January 30, 2004

Contact: Carol Comeau
Superintendent
Phone: 907-742-4312
Fax: 907-742-4318
E-mail: comeau_carol@asdk12.org

The following Op-Ed piece written by Superintendent Carol Comeau appeared in the January 29 edition of the Anchorage Chronicle. The school board approved the proposed 2004-2005 school year budget on January 29 and forwarded the budget to the Anchorage Assembly for consideration. Additional information about the Anchorage School District budget and the School Board's legislative priorities is available at www.asdk12.org.

This has been one of the most challenging years of my 30-year career in the Anchorage School District.

In addition to our regular duties of providing a high-quality education to more than 49,000 students, we’ve had to absorb the mandates of the federal law No Child Left Behind and confront the realities of the Alaska High School Graduation Qualifying Exam.

We’ve dealt with the fallout of Adequate Yearly Progress ratings, and committed ourselves to improvement. We’ve developed new strategies to better help our growing number of English-language learners become proficient English speakers and readers. We’ve improved our services in many areas, all in an effort to educate every student for success in life.

And we’ve done all of this while stretching ever thinning dollars to their breaking point.

We’ve made efficiencies along the way. For example, through better route scheduling and larger buses, we operate fewer bus routes now than we did in the 1980s, even though we have thousands more students.

We’ve had citizen teams review our budget line-by-line and recommend efficiencies and cuts, but we’ve arrived at the point where the citizen teams are reporting that there isn’t any perceived “fat” to cut and few efficiencies left to be made.

All the while, costs increase. Utility rates, vendor contracts, state-mandated contributions to retirement systems, and employee contract costs have all climbed upward at a pace far greater than the relatively flat line of state education funding.

We have arrived at the breaking point for that stretched dollar, and it has come in the form of a $26 million budget gap for the next school year.

Teaching positions will have to be cut, class sizes will be increased, instructional programs, support positions and services will be reduced or eliminated, and fees will be raised.

The budget forecast for the following year is just as grim. A year from now we’ll be facing another $20 million to $22 million in cuts for the 2005-2006 school year. The cuts that will have to be made that year will be even more painful and damaging than the ones we’re discussing at the present.

Is this what our community wants? Other Alaska districts are in similar situations. Is this what our state wants? I don’t believe so!

Education is one of the core, essential state services called for in the Alaska constitution. It is time for all of us to advocate together for increased, adequate and inflation-proofed funding for education for all of Alaska’s students.

The primary solution to our district’s fiscal crisis, and that of every school district statewide, is the creation of a stable, long-term fiscal plan for Alaska.

I am pleased that Governor Murkowski and the legislature appear primed to tackle the state’s long-term fiscal planning. I am encouraged by the governor’s recent remarks on education funding and his decision to explore the use of the Permanent Fund. I hope this is the first step – we must look at all sources of potential revenue to resolve our budget crisis. I wish success to the governor and the many legislators who are working toward true solutions for Alaska’s financial future.

We are counting on all of our elected officials – feder

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