The Juneau School Board will hold its first reading of the school district’s budget on Thursday.
In a work session on Saturday, the board directed district administrators to create a list of items that they can discuss adding to the budget. That includes things like additional positions for the district’s nursing staff, special education and homeschool program.
Student services director Jason DeCamillis said at the meeting that an additional position for the nursing team could support the growing number of students with severe medical needs.
“It’s a little bit more of a centralizing of a position, but it does allow that person to float, be more supportive of the whole system,” DeCamillis said.
The discussion comes as the board grapples with a preliminary budget with a more than $5.3 million deficit. That could be addressed by dipping into savings or making cuts. The district is projected to have about $7.8 million in savings, which is almost $7 million more than what it’s required to maintain.
Board members also requested adding grant-funded positions for the Tlingit Culture, Language and Literacy program to the list. Grant funding for three positions is ending after this school year, and the board has to decide on directly funding them from its operating budget. The board already supported funding one of the positions.
The board is also considering ways to factor in staffing vacancies and people that don’t opt into the district’s health insurance plan. Right now, the district budget assumes it fills all positions and that everyone hired uses the district’s health insurance plan. Unspent funds from vacancies and people waiving health insurance currently go into the district’s savings. The Juneau School district began the school year with about 6% of teaching positions unfilled. And as of February 9, about 7% of the district’s classified positions were vacant.
The board requested staff to present various scenarios: how much money a 1% and 3% vacancy rate would look like. Those funds could be budgeted toward other items. The board is also looking at how much money it can use if it assumes 10% of employees waive the district’s health insurance.
Since at least 2022, the number of district employees opting out of the district’s plan has increased. As of this month, more than 22% of them have waived the plan this school year.
The board will meet to discuss the budget Thursday at Thunder Mountain Middle School at 5:30 p.m. The meeting can also be accessed on Zoom, and the public will have an opportunity to testify in person, online and by emailing budgetinput@juneauschools.org.
