Alaska’s state education funding formula is really complicated. It’s based on data, collected during the school year, that takes months to process. That can leave districts building budgets based on projections that might be inaccurate. Juneau Democratic Rep. Andi Story wants to address that through a bill that would change what data is used for funding calculations.
Story, who served for years on Juneau’s school board, said there’s a level of uncertainty built into the way students are counted.
“When I was a school board member, when we were asking community members, parents to come and work on our budgets, we were always projecting cuts and not knowing what we were going to do,” she said.
Part of that uncertainty comes from not knowing exactly how many students are enrolled until later in the budgeting process. Right now, school districts count the number of students enrolled in October of their current school year. That count needs to be approved by the Department of Education and Early Development, and it determines how much state funding a school district will get for the following school year.
Districts typically don’t receive the approved numbers until months later – in January. That lag means districts begin planning their budgets based on projections instead of actual data.
Story’s bill – House Bill 261 – would make several different changes to which student counts would be used when determining state funding for education.
Story said one of the main things her bill would do is to base student counts either on the previous school year or an average of the previous three years – numbers that would have already been processed by DEED and wouldn’t change throughout the budgeting process.
“I’ve been living in this roller coaster, and seeing how it does not build confidence in our public schools,” Story said. “And so we need to get on a more stable plan, a smart plan.”
This isn’t a new idea. Story is on the Legislature’s Task Force on Education Funding. She said this part of the bill came from a recommendation made by an education consulting agency more than 10 years ago. The idea came up again last November, during a task force meeting.
The bill also seeks to address budgeting for students with disabilities, keeping schools open
There are a couple of other pieces in this bill as well. One addresses how the state counts students that qualify for intensive services. Students with disabilities that require those services receive 13 times the amount of funding that’s typically allocated for a student. If the state determines there are fewer of those students than what the district counted, that can create serious shortfalls in its budget.
The new bill would offer four different options for how to count students who qualify for intensive services, to ensure districts receive the funding needed to support them.
Districts could count students in October or February of the current school year, in October of the previous school year, or take an average of the last three years. They could then use the number that would provide the largest amount of funding.
Story said this method would account for students who might move to other districts.
“Sometimes students move after the count date, they might move to another community, and all of a sudden that community is going to have to hire another staff person, but they’ve already budgeted,” she said. “So where do they pull that money? Because by law, we need to meet that student’s needs.”
Story’s bill also addresses how enrollment counts determine how many schools a district can have. She said small districts can sometimes fall below the threshold that allows for opening another school or keeping an existing school open if enrollment drops by just a couple students in a given year. She said taking an average would help stabilize numbers in situations where the difference of one student could have big financial consequences.
“Those big funding cliffs that really make— that really have communities on edge of, ‘Am I going to get a couple more or a couple less?’” she said.
Lon Garrison is the executive director of the Alaska Association of School Boards, a nonprofit organization that advocates for Alaska students. He said the bill would provide far more stability as school districts build out their budgets. But he said the issue of adequate education funding remains.
“That’s the piece that we have to be focused on,” Garrison said. “What are we going to do to ensure that we’re getting the student outcomes, and what resources do we need?”
It’s unclear if this bill will make its way through the Legislature. Story expects the House Education Committee, which she co-chairs, to take it up in a couple of weeks.
