Pool funding OK’d as district looks to hand off facilities to communities

Planned cuts to pool managers were reversed in the draft budget advanced Thursday by the finance committee of the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District’s Board of Education, though the committee said they need to see a solution next year that takes the pools out from district management.

As the district grapples with a $17 million deficit, one of the cuts advanced in a preliminary budget in April was elimination of all the district’s pool managers. Without those staff to operate the pools, the facilities would be expected to close.

Zen Kelly, president of the board, has said repeatedly that the pools are assets that should be under community management because they see greater use from the community — pool staff pushed back on that definition in conversations with the Clarion this month, saying that school pools play an important role in connecting students with water safety training in an accessible way as part of their curriculum.

Kelly on Thursday pointed to community efforts that mounted this year to retain pools in Seldovia and Ninilchik — those pools were told in March that they were going to be closed — as an example of the response he’d like to see. Pools in other communities haven’t had similar support, and would close without funding from the district this year.

Pools have repeatedly been raised as a possible option for closure and then saved at the last minute, Kelly said. This time, the conversation “becomes real.” A solution needs to be found by next year for some model of community management. Kelly said Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Peter Micciche had voiced interest in creating a working group to explore borough management of pools and theaters.

“My intent behind the reprieve of five of our pools is that this is so we can get our act together,” Kelly said. “Next year, communities need to step up and fund them … this is a one-year reprieve.”

Jason Taurianen, vice president of the board, said he didn’t support retaining pools any longer. Other communities have taken the initiative to form service areas and are paying to keep their pools open. The district shouldn’t continue funding pools in a “select set of communities” while making deep cuts to staffing and programs across the Kenai Peninsula.

“They have to form service areas and fund their own pools, just like Nikiski does and just like other communities that have stepped up,” he said. “It’s time.”

Members Kelley Cizek and Virginia Morgan said they were supportive of the move to fund the pools this year under the understanding that “this can’t continue.”

That opportunity, to delay the closure of the pools and explore new means of operating the facilities, is exactly what a group of protesters outside the borough administration building on Thursday were calling for.

Sarah Castimore, treasurer of the Peninsula Piranhas swim club, was among more than 40 students and parents who gathered with signs outside the finance committee meeting. She said that she’s heard it said for years that the school district shouldn’t be running the pools, especially with ongoing financial issues from stagnant state funding and declining enrollment, but a permanent solution has never been developed.

In previous years, Castimore said she’d thought pools and theaters were a carrot to be dangled to get people to advocate for more funding. Because cuts to pools and theaters weren’t discussed for closure until so late this year, she said it feels much different.

“Now, all of a sudden, it’s not fine,” she said. “Nobody is paying attention this year to that fact that we literally don’t have money this time.”

Stephanie Snyder, head coach of the Soldotna High School swim team and the Soldotna Silver Salmon swim club, said she was frustrated by the annual battle to defend the pools. This year seemed like it wouldn’t be the same — as pools weren’t initially planned to close — but now Snyder said they’re being challenged to rally behind the pools suddenly and at the last minute.

To lose school pools, Castimore said, would mean losing an important tool in teaching water safety — in a state that leads the nation in drowning death rates and a community intrinsically tied to its rivers.

The pools are an important space for children to learn how to swim and develop healthy lifestyles, Snyder said. Swimming keeps people moving, isn’t hard on the joints, and makes people safer when they’re out around water.

While Ninilchik and Seldovia have stepped up to keep their pools open, Castimore said, Kenai, Soldotna and others haven’t had the opportunity to try.

Snyder said that she hopes for greater transparency from the district about what it would take to operate the pools. As the district asks communities to take on pool operations, she doesn’t know exactly what that financial ask is.

A full recording of the finance committee meeting will be made available at the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District’s BoardDocs website.

Though the committee removed the cuts to pool managers in the budget they’re advancing to the full board for approval on July 7, KPBSD Human Resources Director Nate Crabtree said pool managers who are set to lose their jobs and insurance on June 30 still will. They won’t be able to be rehired until that official approval comes from the board a week later.

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