Unalaska City School District officials are advocating for more education funding during their annual visits to the Alaska State Legislature. A top priority is increasing the base student allocation, or BSA — that’s a number the state uses to determine how much funding each district receives per student. Members of the UCSD school board flew into Juneau over the weekend to speak with representatives and address the Legislature. Superintendent Kim Hanisch is also slated to visit the state capital in late March.
Hanisch told KUCB’s Andy Lusk why the island’s representatives want the BSA to grow, and about challenges in retaining teachers.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Kim Hanisch: During [the Association of Alaska School Boards legislative fly-in, board members are] training, [in] conference[s], learning about the legislation that's out there. They get to take some time to really fine-tune their talking points. They'll practice when they go in to speak to one of our legislators, or when they testify. So they get practice and gain some confidence. And then Monday, our board has appointments to visit with our local legislators, so we'll be seeing Rep. Edgemon and then Senator Hoffman and Senator Olson as well.
Andy Lusk: Who would the board members be training with?
Hanisch: They will have some of it just with the Alaska Association of School Board staff, and then usually they'll get someone from AML — Alaska Municipal League — and talk a lot about…budget. They'll probably bring in a couple of school board members that have been active over the years to talk to them about how they advocate. And I'll be going back [for] the superintendent fly-in…at the very end of March.
Lusk: Will you be talking about the same priorities at these separate meetings?
Hanisch: Our priorities will likely stay the same. We might approach them differently depending on where the bills are and which ones are still active. And by that time, there's probably going to be new things that are thrown into them. So that part of it will change, but our underlying message will stay the same.
Lusk: And what is that message?
Hanisch: Increase the BSA.
Lusk: Describe what exactly the BSA is and why it matters.
Hanisch: BSA itself stands for base student allocation. It's the amount of money the state allocates per student.
There's a huge formula that the numbers go through. Say we have 331 students, which we do right now, that starts the formula — then cost of living for us is taken into consideration, number of Special Ed students, CTE — all these factors go in there, so that a student in Unalaska now has a value that's going to be different than a student in Anchorage, because it costs more to educate them here.
So if we increase the base student allocation from where it is right now — and what our ask is for the next coming year is a $1,000 increase — if we calculate that out…that would bring in approximately $900,000 that we don't have right now.
Lusk: That's a lot.
Hanisch: That’s a lot. And being in the BSA instead of one-time funding means next year it's still that amount, and the next year after, it's still that amount — or maybe more. That still doesn't inflation-proof us at that point, after 13 years of flat funding, but it would take some pressure off.
Lusk: And that's priority number one, so what are some of the [others]?
Hanisch: Out of the list really, for us, considering hiring as well as retention, the BSA is going to have the most dramatic impact on us being able to afford teachers that want to come here. And then there's two sister bills that are regarding retirement benefits. And so again, for retention, the retirement benefits are pretty important.
Lusk: That’s pensions, right?
Hanisch: Yeah, giving people at least a choice between defined contributions and defined benefits.
Lusk: What makes these such pressing matters right now? What's changed recently?
Hanisch: I'd say more, what hasn't changed over the last 13 years — that's an increase in the BSA. So we've been flat funded. Put in another way, as the cost of living increases, we don't get any more money to pay for those expenses in any of the school districts in Alaska. So that's the pressing issue: districts, including us, we're getting to the point of near panic over what we’re supposed to do if we do not get that increase.
Lusk: Let's say a member of the general public hears this interview and they say, ‘Oh, I'm also passionate about those issues. How can they get looped into this?’
Hanisch: You can always be writing letters to our legislators. Specifically, that would be Hoffman and Edgmon. And by the way, our legislators are very much supportive of education, so you're not going in to fight them. You're going to say, ‘Keep doing it. Keep doing it. Keep doing it.’
If you're wanting to testify during a specific committee meeting that's taking place, the easiest way to access that information is through Gavel Alaska. Just do a quick search on that. It'll show you any live meetings that are taking place. And then there'll be a number that you call in. I just did it yesterday, as a matter of fact. So you call in, they're going to ask your name, which committee you want to go into, and then you're on a waiting list, and you just listen to everybody else, and pretty soon your name gets called up, and you get between two and three minutes.
Lusk: A little bit like a city council meeting.
Hanisch: Yes.
Lusk: What would you like the general public to know about all of this that maybe we haven't touched on yet?
Hanisch: We want everyone that's part of our school community to be inspired to navigate unique and personal journeys.
Well, as the cost of living is going up and no extra money is coming in, to be able to achieve that becomes impossible because we can't broaden programs. The only thing we can do is narrow what we can offer. It starts cutting into programs that were already [there] because that does take staffing to offer different programs. It starts making us look at class sizes. Students don't get as inspired in a class that's really large, and they don't feel seen.
Those are some big things to really be thinking about. If we don't have this funding, what's the risk that we're losing? Also, without that funding to be competitive in the salary market, people aren't flocking into Alaska in general. They're definitely not looking at areas that they can't afford. It gets disheartening when we know that we're going to struggle, but we will find quality teachers. They're out there, but we're going to be digging. Increasing that BSA would sure help a lot.
Lusk: If we can do a thought experiment for just a moment, I don't want to think about the next couple of weeks — I want to think about maybe five to 10 years from now. What would you like to see change within that timeline to bring more teachers onto the island?
Hanisch: Have a competitive salary that allows them to show up here and not spend the first year trying to get out of debt. And I think that goes with anyone that moves here. So it's not just teachers — that's everybody.
