2009 Legislative Priorities

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Legislative Task Force Report

The district strongly supports the work done by the Joint Legislative Educational Funding Task Force and looks forward to continuing the processes suggested by the task force.

Standing committees:

Creation of standing committees on education in both the State House and Senate will provide a welcome focus on and oversight of the important education issues in Alaska. Critical are several important topics left by the task force to be addressed by these committees:

• the special needs block grant: bilingual, gifted, vocational, & special education (not intensive needs)
• vocational technology programs,
  
• voluntary pre-k programs,
  
• innovative or best practices grants,
  
• charter and correspondence schools, and
  
• additional funding for increased enrollment past the October “count date.”

District cost factors:

District cost differential factors are used to balance funding equitably by accounting for the varying cost of education across Alaska. The particulars of any cost study can be debated, yet few dispute it is more expensive to educate children in some areas of Alaska than in other areas. The district supports the task force recommendation to implement the most recent cost-factor study while simultaneously creating a commission to review and up­date cost difference factors. The district believes these cost factors, along with the increased multiplier for intensive needs funding, need to be implemented at an accelerated pace.

Intensive needs funding:

The district is appreciative of recent improvements in the funding formula regarding intensive needs students; however, inadequate funding for students with intensive needs has shortchanged districts for many years. The average cost of educating an intensive needs student in Anchorage is nearly $78,000 per year. The current increased multiplier of nine times the base student allocation remains insufficient, requiring the district to take funds from the general budget to provide these students with legally required services. The district supports an accelerated phase-in of increased funding for students with intensive needs.

Base student allocation:

The task force recognized that statutory annual increases would help districts with long-range planning. The recommendation calls for increasing the BSA for fiscal years 2009-11 by “at a minimum” $100 per year. ASD’s analysis demonstrated that increases greater than $100 per year for FY09 and FY10 would be necessary simply to maintain the current level of ser­vice. In fact, the Governor’s recommendation for $200 on the base would have made the district whole in FY09 and FY10. To that end, the Anchorage School Board endorses an increase of $200 on the base in FY10 and prospectively to FY11 and FY12 to keep pace with increasing costs. The Board further requests that the legislature continue to adopt into statute the base student allocation for each of the successive three years.

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