With a week left in the legislative session, the Alaska House passed a bill Tuesday focused on how students are counted.
The bill aims to stabilize the budgeting process for school districts through a few different ways. Rep. Andi Story, D-Juneau, sponsored the bill and explained on the floor Tuesday that it allows school districts to use known enrollment counts to calculate funding. Currently, districts use enrollment projections.
“School districts will know and be able to use their prior three years student count average or their previous year student count number for the school year,” she said. “This helps avoid unexpected budget changes in October, if the student count, enrollment comes in lower than projected.”
Rep. Justin Ruffridge, R-Soldotna, added an amendment on Monday, which took language from another bill that’s currently being considered by the Senate. It prevents the amount of funding local municipalities must pay to school districts from increasing by more than 2% each year.
Municipalities can still contribute more than the required amount up to a certain amount. The amendment doesn’t limit how much that cap can increase. Ruffridge said this helps to keep the cost of education a state responsibility instead of shifting it to local governments.
“What this is resulting in right now … without the amendment passing, is local jurisdictions having to either raise property taxes or other versions of taxes to meet that full requirement of the required local contribution,” he said.
Rep. Kevin McCabe, R-Big Lake, said the amendment should be considered as a bill on its own.
“We need to clearly understand what’s going to happen, and we need to clearly understand what the boroughs are going to actually do with this money, instead of just shifting the cost to the state,” he said.
The House passed the amendment in a 24-16 vote.
The House approved another amendment from Ruffridge that allows a district to use its current year student count if it’s increased at all. The previous version of the bill only allowed districts to do so if there was at least a 5% enrollment increase.
The House passed the bill in a 31-9 vote on Tuesday. It will need to go through the Senate before passing out of the Legislature and onto the governor for approval. The last day of the legislative session is scheduled for May 20.
