The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District is considering cuts to staffing, programs, all sports, and even potentially closing buildings to overcome a $17 million deficit created by stagnant school funding. That’s what Superintendent Clayton Holland told the House and Senate education committees of the Alaska Legislature on Monday. Holland’s testimony joined other school districts this week in urgently calling for an increase to school funding.

In only the first weeks of the legislative session, education funding has quickly become among the most discussed issues as school districts and education advocates call for an increase to the base student allocation, the amount of money the state provides to districts per student. Even the conservative Senate minority has acknowledged a need to stabilize education funding.

Last year, an education bill was passed by the Legislature that would have, among other things, increased the BSA by $680. That bill was vetoed by the governor and an effort to override the veto failed by one vote. KPBSD leadership said earlier this month that an increase of $680 would no longer be sufficient to avoid cuts.

During a meeting of the House education committee on Monday morning, Holland called in to give testimony after the committee also heard from a variety of other school districts.

The chief operations officer of the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District said his district faces a $31 million deficit this year, has closed four schools and is considering closure of five more. The superintendent of the Kuspuk School District said that classrooms in her schools have “up to seven grade levels” in a single classroom after staffing cuts and also has lost programs for career and technical education, art, music and social studies. A member of the Ketchikan Gateway Borough School District’s Board of Education said that they’ve seen cuts to career and technical education, advanced placement classes, languages, art and music, with significantly increased class sizes.

The KPBSD, Holland said, is facing a $17 million deficit and has a remaining fund balance of $300,000, “which is less than one day’s operating budget.”

“We actually have just issued a hiring freeze completely across the district,” he said. “We’re looking at massive cuts to programs, staffing, as well as school closures that are being considered.”

To meet that deficit, he said, the district is looking at increasing the number of students per classroom by 10 or more, which would eliminate 85 teaching positions; cutting all extracurriculars and sports; reducing district office staff by 10% or more; cutting the Kenai Peninsula Middle College School program; and others.

Holland gave a similar presentation to the Senate education committee that afternoon. He said that the many years where the base student allocation has failed to adjust for inflation have caused the district to cut back its programming and its savings.

The discussions around cutting pools and theaters, he said, are “not a scare tactic for us.”

“When it comes to this massive deficit, we have to put everything on the table and think about what’s the furthest from classroom instruction,” he said. “This time, it’s not just the pools and theaters, it’ll be whole facilities being closed.”

State revenues for transportation, he said, have failed to meet the rising costs of gas. The district in recent years transferred other money from its general fund to cover the gap, but this year instead had to cut routes — and likely will again next year.

“That means we’re moving kids out to the highway for pickup, off of the loop roads or further out, and eliminating routes in some cases,” he said. “Whether we have a bus of 40 kids or 10 kids, we have to go out and pick them up. For the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District, that also means traveling 7,000 miles a day total on the road to do that.”

Insurance costs, too, have ballooned to eat away larger amounts of revenue in recent years, Holland said. Power outages caused the borough to purchase 500 gallons of fuel in Tyonek that wasn’t an anticipated expense. Salary increases are “very much needed” for district employees, which are difficult to negotiate while facing down the $17 million deficit.

Lost in the discussions about school funding, Holland said, is what the districts have already lost in years of cuts. He cited a need for more robust career and technical education programs in some district schools and the dwindling presence of music programming.

“We’re doing some great things, but it’s a fraction of what it could be,” he said. “When I think about the future of this district in Alaska, I think about those opportunities that are being missed, and have been missed over the course of the last 10 years as we’ve steadily declined in what we’ve done and offered to our students. I champion what we do — we have great kids doing great things and great people doing great things. We can definitely do so much more.”

Full recordings of both meetings are available at ktoo.org/gavel. The KPBSD Board of Education next meets on Feb. 3 at 6 p.m. in the Betty J. Glick Assembly Chambers.

Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.