Local schools won’t be impacted by Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s education budget vetoes in the upcoming school year, according to officials with the Unalaska City School District. In fact, the district is slated to receive more than district officials budgeted for.
Dunleavy vetoed funding an education bill in mid-June. The Alaska Legislature had approved the one-time amount of $175 million to help schools with increased inflation costs. But shortly after it was signed into law, the governor cut more than $87 million from the one-time funding.
The loss won’t significantly affect the Unalaska City School District, according to the district’s new superintendent, Kim Hanisch. She said some Alaska school districts counted on it, while others didn’t.
“Unalaska’s plan was as if nothing was going to change in the funding,” Hanisch said. “It's not going to impact us as far as, ‘Oh my gosh, where are we going to come up with this money we thought we had?’”
Overall, the district is expecting $330,000 more in state funding than originally expected.
Even though Unalaska’s schools didn’t count on getting the increase in state money, Hanisch said it's still crucial for the state to raise the base student allocation. That’s per-student state funding that goes to schools every year and Alaska’s BSA has only gone up by a couple of hundred dollars in the last decade. This past legislative session, there was a push to raise the BSA, but it was unsuccessful despite districts around the state lobbying for it. Hanisch said that an increase in reliable funds — not just a one-time deal — could allow the district to hire more staff.
“To serve students, the more staff you have — or the higher paid your staff are so that they're retained — the better our educational system is going to be,” Hanisch said.
The Unalaska school district gets its funding from two primary sources: the state and the City of Unalaska. The district received full funding from the city for the 2024 fiscal year.
“If we were to compare city contributions for this year's budget to state contributions … it's about 50/50 for us,” Hanisch said.
Hanisch said the extra state funds will go toward closing the district’s $170,000 deficit and a long list of needs like maintenance and classroom resources.
