After the final performance of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” by the Seward High School Theatre Collective, director Meegan Miller announced to a sold-out auditorium that the group’s next show in fall of this year would be directed by student Evie Bukac. Miller made that “promise,” amid a backdrop of what she called “giant” proposed cuts to the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District, because she had been assured that theaters would be safe by district leadership. Her position was terminated June 6.

When Miller came to collect her things from Seward High, her principal, Henry Burns, hadn’t been informed that the job had been cut. She didn’t receive a formal letter of dismissal until the following week — the letter misspells her first name.

“Due to funding,” the letter begins, “your 4-hour-per-day Theater Technician position at Seward High School has been eliminated … The District appreciates the time and effort you have put forth as an employee, and we hope you will consider applying for any advertised positions for which you are qualified.”

Miller said she was “blindsided.” That’s the word being used this week by multiple people involved in running libraries and theaters for the district.

The district confirmed in a press release last week that it had issued “notices of non-retention” to all its pool managers, library aides and theater technicians.

The Clarion reviewed a few of these letters, each of which say that positions are eliminated and that affected employees are set to lose their health care coverage at the end of the month.

The local school district this year has been grappling with a projected $17 million deficit, driven by years of stagnant state education funding that have almost entirely drained the district’s fund balance. The Alaska Legislature increased the amount of per-student funding in Alaska Statute by $700, slightly greater than the one-time funding equal to a $680 increase from last year, but Gov. Mike Dunleavy last week vetoed school funding in the state’s budget to only a $500 increase, below the level described in statute.

The budget advanced by the district in April describes elimination of many staff, cuts to programs and closures of two schools. The current budget describes eliminating pool managers, but not theater technicians or library aides, who were suddenly terminated this month.

KPBSD Superintendent Clayton Holland said this week that, despite staff losses, he expects all the facilities to continue in some form. He said that pools could eventually be taken over by the borough, that theaters could somehow operate without technicians, and that some library aides would ultimately be rehired.

The timing of the terminations, before the governor had announced his budget decision and weeks ahead of a finance committee meeting of the KPBSD Board of Education where the group is expected to develop a final budget to match the realities of further reduced state funding, “wasn’t ideal,” Holland said. There was a need felt by the KPBSD human resources department to let people know sooner that they may not have jobs and that their insurance may be expiring.

He acknowledged that the threat of possible cuts, exacerbated by less state funding and no remaining fund balance, are “a bit more serious” than in previous years where the district has been able to reverse all of its budget reductions. The board, he said, will be made to make difficult choices to protect its “core functions.” Where foundational skills and career and technical education are priorities, other programs may “look vastly different.”

Aiding no one

Librarians and library aides from Soldotna, Homer and Seward this week said they were surprised by the district’s sudden cut this month to all of its library aides. Despite what the name implies, they said, library aides are rarely supplemental to a librarian and many operate libraries in the district on their own — some operate multiple libraries on their own.

A possible cut to library aides only at schools where a certified librarian is employed — an estimated reduction of around $219,000 in salaries and benefits — was discussed in the district’s budget process but wasn’t included in the budget advanced by the school board in April and hasn’t ever been moved by the board for implementation.

Holland said Tuesday that, true to the cut described, he only expects aides to be cut from schools that have librarians. He said that some library aides may be bumped from their facilities and lose their jobs to other library aides with more seniority. He said decision on whether or not to actually implement the cuts will come at the school board’s finance committee meeting on June 26.

Kristy Stevenson is the library aide for both Paul Banks Elementary and West Homer Elementary in Homer. Neither library has a librarian and she spends half her day at each — travelling between the two on her lunch break.

Similarly, Jessica Bamford is the library aide at Seward Elementary and Seward Middle. She said that, regardless of what the district has said in the days since telling her she was terminated, she still has a letter saying she doesn’t have a job anymore.

Deborah Curtis is the librarian and the library aide at Homer High School. She applied for both positions and took both positions, spending half the day as the school’s librarian and half the day as the library aide. She said she doesn’t act any different in the afternoon, while she’s paid less. Now that the aide position is cut, the library will be unstaffed during the second half of the day.

Many of the district’s librarians were together at the Alaska School Library Learning Academy in Anchorage when they received their termination letters. Curtis said that she expected the cut because her school is one of the few that had a librarian and a library aide. The others were “blindsided,” because they’d never known that there was any threat to their jobs.

While Holland said Tuesday that he expects library aides who are the only staff at their libraries to be rehired, Stevenson said Tuesday that she’s been told by the district that she doesn’t have a job. She doesn’t know how to plan for the future or for her family.

“It’s difficult when that rug is pulled out from under you,” she said. “You’re not even thinking that there’s any possibility, because why would you take books from elementary students?”

The school board hadn’t discussed the cuts publicly, Curtis said. It wasn’t clear to the aides who made the decision to issue the termination notices.

“When you get fired, you feel like you are not valued and you are not needed and you are not appreciated,” Curtis said. “It is not a morale booster.”

When she was hired, Bamford was aide to a librarian. That position went away a long time ago. Just as she was asked to do more when the librarian was eliminated, she wonders how other busy staff at her two schools could possibly take on her responsibilities if she were eliminated.

Stevenson said she was never “aiding anyone.” She was it at Paul Banks and West Homer, chasing grants to buy new materials, working to instill a love of reading in her students and maintaining a safe zone for students who become absorbed in their books.

Curtis, Stevenson and Bamford all said that their job has increasingly been defined by the need to manage and provide technical support for the district’s Chromebooks. Those devices, laptop computers that are checked out to students, managed and repaired throughout the year require a lot of time and logistical attention that can’t simply be passed off to other staff.

Between Chromebooks and each library’s collection of physical books, Curtis said district library aides are responsible for millions of dollars in real assets.

Elementary schoolers, Stevenson said, love nonfiction. They want to learn about volcanoes and fish — and they can’t just grab their phone and look things up like older kids. But she sees children devouring all kinds of books — and returning to her looking for their sequels. She sends books home for the summer with students who wouldn’t otherwise have access to them.

Libraries are special because they’re places where students can choose what they want to read, Bamford said. She pointed to graphic novels as a major driver of interest, as well as nonfiction about cats, dogs and cooking.

While Holland said that the board will have to work to understand what the cuts might actually look like later this month, there was never a scenario considered where library aides would be eliminated from schools where they’re the only library staff. While library aides at schools with librarians may ultimately be cut, he said, “there’s never been discussion about not having libraries open to students.”

Learning to swim

Pool manager Will Hubler has worked at the Kenai Central High School pool for 35 years. At Kenai’s pool, Hubler has seen thousands of students go through required middle and high school swimming units through their physical education program. He’s seen it save a few of those students’ lives.

Not every student who comes to the pool has had swim lessons before. When those students come with their PE classes to Kenai Central, they could be nervous or embarrassed. There’s “always” a group of five to 10 students who aren’t comfortable in the water — maybe they can’t even put their face in.

“If they dress out every day, get in and try, they learn to swim,” Hubler said.

One of those students, who’d been nervous to get in the water and learned water safety at Kenai Central, survived when his fishing boat flipped over in Cook Inlet.

That’s what Hubler says he worries will be lost if pools are considered something that can be dropped from the district. In early June, he said that he and other pool managers still hadn’t been told what’s going to happen — they don’t have a contract and they’re still slated for closure according to the draft budget passed in April.

Through the uncertainty, Hubler says he worries that people don’t realize the district’s pools could go away this year. He said that people are tired of fighting for the pools again and again — but this year is different. The proposed elimination of all the district’s pool managers and consequently the closure of the pools they manage — a reduction of around $750,000 — is included on the district’s current budget that assumes more funding than the district will receive from the state this year.

“I don’t think a lot of people realize how close we are to this being cut,” Hubler said. “We haven’t got the pink slip, in writing, but we got told it’s not looking great.”

Holland said that some district pools are staying open in a limited capacity for this summer; he’d said last month specifically that that arrangement extends through Aug. 15. That move was meant to allow time for other options to be considered for management of the pools by communities or other entities. People in Ninilchik are considering a recreation service area that would generate property tax revenue to run the pool at Ninilchik School, and in Seldovia the mill rate for an existing recreation service area has been raised to support their pool.

It’s unclear what solutions could be developed or implemented for pools in Kenai, Soldotna, Homer and Seward. That conversation is “happening now,” but Holland didn’t provide any details this week about what a timeline could look like, and wasn’t sure what exactly continued school use of the pools would look like.

If the pools end up closing — even temporarily — Hubler says he could begin his retirement. Then he wouldn’t be able to come back if they do reopen.

When the school board talks about pools, Hubler said, they often describe them as secondary to the mission of district schools. But Hubler said that learning to swim, learning to be safe in cold water, learning to survive in emergency situations is more important than some people realize.

“It’s one of those things that you can do your whole life,” Hubler said. “We want to drown-proof them the best we can and teach them survival skills so they can enjoy the environment.”

Seeking a spotlight

Miller said that she’d been aware that theaters were considered for possible cuts — they are every year. She’s rallied, signed petitions and championed her program in years past, but this year she “wasn’t fighting as hard as I probably could have,” because she’d been “led to believe” that theaters wouldn’t be cut. She’d assuaged the fears of her students; she hadn’t known that anything would change after “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

“They were telling me we were OK,” Miller said. “I stood on stage at our last performance and announced that our student assistant manager will be directing the next show in front of a sold-out audience of about 310 people. I had no idea.”

Theater technicians are only set for a reduction in work days in the budget advanced by the district in April, which would cut $157,000. That doesn’t match the reality of termination notices being issued to the district’s techs this month. A deeper cut of eliminating techs is estimated to reduce around $641,000 in salaries and benefits, but that cut isn’t in the current budget.

Without a theater technician, Miller said, her understanding is that district theaters cannot operate. Techs are tasked with operating and maintaining equipment and ensuring facilities are safely and correctly used. While she could still direct productions of the Seward High School Theatre Collective, “if a theater isn’t usable, we don’t have a place to have these programs continue.”

Carla Jenness, who helms Nikiski Bulldog Theater at Nikiski Middle/High School, said she’d heard first that something was happening when one of her students texted her to ask what it means that “the theaters are shuttered.” Then she heard that Nikiski’s theater techs had been asked to turn in their keys. It wasn’t “uncertainty,” she said, instead it was “your job is done.” By Monday of this week, Jenness said she still hadn’t been told what’s going on or whether theater will be allowed to continue at Nikiski next year.

Like Miller, Jenness said that she hadn’t taken the possibility of theater cuts as seriously as she had in previous years — “it’s almost become like the boy that cried wolf.” After years of hearing that theaters might go away, of seeing cuts reversed at the last moment, she hadn’t thought for a moment that next year could look completely different. She’s already ordered the rights for the fall show at Nikiski Middle/High.

Kyler Allen is a recent Nikiski graduate who just played the lead in Elvis-themed musical “All Shook Up.” He heard that theater technicians had been terminated from an Instagram repost. He said that, after years of fighting “tooth and nail to keep the people who make the school what it is,” many are tired or aren’t paying as much attention.

Even if Nikiski can operate without theater technicians, Jenness said the professionals who filled those roles aren’t simply replaced. These are the people who know how operate and program lights, mix sound and bring the stage to life. Without them, “it wouldn’t look as good and it wouldn’t sound as good.”

Holland said this week that the district doesn’t know how theaters will stay functional next year. He said that’ll be part of the board discussion this month and next.

Jenness said she isn’t prepared to let theater stop, but that she fears that the district will allow the responsibility of supporting programs like theater to fall increasingly to volunteers and parents. They’ll do it, she said, because they love it. They can’t do it forever.

“I have no idea how I’m going to look at the kids and say to them ‘we’ll have a show, but now I’m your director, your music teacher, and your sound tech and your lighting tech,’” she said. “It’s not sustainable to just rely on people’s passion.”

Sammi O’Reagen is a theater parent at Nikiski. She said that programs like theater, creative outlets and windows into a professional world otherwise unrepresented, are important to keep students attending school. Theater enriches the lives of students at Nikiski Middle/High and it drives them to better performance and behavior in school.

“It’s so counterintuitive that these things that are core experiences for kids and do prepare them incredibly for life are the things that are getting cut,” she said.

Oshie Broussard, O’Reagen’s daughter, said that she’s scared for what a program she loves might look like next year — her senior year in high school. She wants to go into the performing arts after high school and worries that she will lose opportunities to develop her art and to seek out college scholarships.

Jenness said she’s seen students change and grow into better young people through theater. She’s seen shy students come out of their shells and she’s seen a young girl have her hair done up for the very first time in her life by Nikiski’s costume ladies.

That kid, who’s never had her hair done nice before, isn’t going to have a parent drive them into a performance in community theater in Kenai, Jenness said. She only came to the theater because it was offered in her school, in her class schedule.

The warmth of collaborating and creating, Miller said, isn’t replaceable by a math class. It also draws upon and develops skills in a hands-on way that extends far beyond any classrooms. In Seward’s theater, students are designing, constructing and problem-solving. They’re learning to operate professional lighting and sound equipment. They’re working with a team to tell a story. They’re choreographing. They’re diving deeply into history — exploring the Civil War in “Little Women” or McCarthyism in “Clue.”

“These are all powerful subjects that, in a classroom, they glance over,” Miller said. “We get to dive in and really explore.”

Allen called theater a “crash course for life” and a “synthesis” of “every other thing going on in the building all at once.” In theater, he said, students are implementing the things they’ve learned from mathematics to construction to science.

“There’s no point for kids to go to a building for 10 hours a day, or however long, to just sit and do reading, writing and arithmetic all day,” he said. “There needs to be something to break up and diversify their education and something to challenge and to meet the kids where they’re at. You can’t really do that in a classroom. You can do that on a theater stage.”

The KPBSD Board of Education will meet for finance committee on June 26 and for a full meeting on July 7. They have to finalize their budget and submit it to the Department of Education and Early Development by July 15.

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