‘We just need more time’

Nikolaevsk School is still being considered for closure, with the move included Monday in all three draft budget scenarios being considered by the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District Board of Education for next year. At a school board budget work session, board president Zen Kelly said “we still have time to turn things around” for Nikolaevsk before the district finalizes its budget for the coming school year, though he didn’t specify how the community could prevent the closure.

Monday’s work session follows a meeting last Thursday, April 3, during which Nikolaevsk School staff, parents and students gathered in the school library during a community meeting facilitated by the school district superintendent and board members.

The meeting was held to provide a “respectful, transparent” conversation space for Nikolaevsk community members, school staff and district leadership in the face of the potential Nikolaevsk school closure. Three borough schools — Sterling Elementary and Tustumena Elementary schools, in addition to Nikolaevsk School — are currently being considered for closure for the upcoming school year due to the district’s $17 million deficit.

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District Superintendent Clayton Holland; Assistant Superintendent Kari Dendurent; board president Zen Kelly; board member Tim Daugherty; Director of Elementary Education Eric Pederson; and Director of Planning and Operations Kevin Lyon were in attendance.

In the conversation about school closures, Holland said the district is tasked with looking at capacity and that the schools being considered for closure or consolidation were chosen based on the capacity that the school was built for and the current enrollment for that school.

According to Kelly, school funding is based on the number of students present in the school building during what he called the OASIS count.

“That’s how we fund our district and all of our locations,” he said. “Nikolaevsk has seen a sharp decrease during COVID and those students have not returned. When that happens, we’re put in a position where there’s only limited resources within the district that we can use to keep a site open.”

Nikolaevsk School, which was built for 150 students, currently has 23 students — a sizeable increase from the school’s COVID-era population of four students. Prior to COVID, the school population was between 70-80 students.

With a new principal, Diane Maples, recently installed and a three-year plan in place for further improvements and student body growth, the school is currently in a “rebuilding phase,” one parent said.

Holland said that when the district hired Maples, he’d hoped they would have time to rebuild the school’s reputation and population.

Parents and staff attending Thursday’s meeting ultimately urged the district to keep Nikolaevsk School open, or at least delay closure for one more year to allow the school to increase enrollment.

“What I’d like to see is solutions for how to keep this school open, because we’re in a rebuilding phase,” Nikolaevsk parent Blake Sawyer said, noting that Nikolaevsk School is the only K-12 facility in the community. “We’re just on the cusp of turning this thing around, and it would just be so sad to see it get shut down when everybody here is on the same page (and) there’s life in this building again.”

Nikolaevsk School is also unique in that it is integrated in the community’s calendar, culture and languages. Multiple parents and current and former school staff members said that closing the school would be a “devastation” to the community.

According to state statute, once a school is closed, it cannot be reopened for seven years.

One student asked how much money the district would save by closing Nikolaevsk School down. According to Kelly, that number is $474,000 in the next fiscal year.

A parent asked the district representatives where the cuts and closures will stop.

District leadership said that the biggest variable right now is the base student allocation.

“Where it stops depends on what the state is going to do with funding,” Kelly said. “When we receive adequate funding from the state in order to run an educational system, that’s the break even.”

The ongoing reason why the district is considering drastic options to mitigate the deficit, including consolidating or closing schools, is partly because of high inflation and partly because of a lack of adequate state education funding.

Since 2017, Alaska has experienced a 25% rate of inflation, Holland said, adding that while some State of Alaska departments’ funding has kept up with inflation, education has not.

“We’re definitely in a difficult position as a district. We have been for many, many years,” Kelly said. “I’ve been on the board for 10 years, and this conversation keeps coming up over and over again about how are we going to properly fund our schools.

“Continually, the state has not kicked in enough to keep up with the rising cost of inflation. So now we’re at this point of really difficult decisions having to be made.”

Retired Nikolaevsk educator Steve Klaich, who currently works at the school as a long-term substitute teacher, spoke on the district’s three budget scenarios, which are based on a $1,000, $680 or $340 increases to the BSA, respectively.

“Scenario one, the district will end up with over a $2 million surplus. Scenarios two and three, the district will end up with over a $4 million surplus,” he said. “Nikolaevsk (School) costs under a half million. Our priority needs to be keeping Nikolaevsk open and not building that nest egg.”

Kelly said that he was in “complete agreement” with Klaich. However, he added, he’s currently anticipating education funding from the borough to fall under the maximum allowable funding that the district is asking for, in which case that surplus would likely evaporate upon submission of the district’s budget to the borough.

“This is not a surplus. This is a contingency until we have more answers,” he said. “I agree with you … but I don’t think we’re going to hit our target revenue.”

Kelly asked the room at large what other choices they would make to mitigate the looming deficit.

“We have had to make the painstaking decisions of where to put these priorities. This touches on every school in our district in a significant way,” he said. “We need to know, what else? Where would you take this $475,000? There’s a list of choices there — let the board know what your priorities are.

“Saying ‘Don’t close Niko,’ that’s great to hear. What would you do instead? That’s the decision that we’re tasked with.”

The district has to send a balanced budget, which would include a final determination on school closures for this year, at the end of this month. A special meeting to continue deliberation on the KPBSD budget is set for April 23.

One of the alternatives to closure discussed by community members and district leadership was turning Nikolaevsk School into a charter school, which would be funded by the state depending on enrollment.

“If a charter were coming in, our board is ready for it,” he said. “There’s nothing stopping a group of people to get together and form a charter.”

However, Kelly said, the best option that district residents currently have is talking to their legislative representatives and advocating for adequate state-provided education funding.