The Ketchikan School District delivered layoff notices to 52 teachers and administrators Wednesday, in light of insufficient funding from the state and borough governments. The Borough Assembly, which allocates school funding, voted at its last meeting to substantially cut next year’s district budget.
The Board assured the community that they eventually expect to receive more state and local funding and recall most layoffs. But that didn’t stop dozens of parents, teachers, and residents from voicing their frustrations at the Board’s Monday meeting.
Jolene Thomas was one of about three dozen speakers who addressed the School Board, during an emotional citizen comment section that lasted more than two hours.
“I am here as a parent, and here as a grandparent, and community member and also a teacher,” Thomas said.
Thomas said through the school’s programs, she’d learned a lot about mental health and trauma and the importance of having strong, reliable relationships.
“My high schooler calls me this morning in tears, because teachers that she has made close relationships with, that make her want to go to school, that make her want to go to college, that make her want to be a teacher are leaving,” Thomas said. “Because they’re getting the pink slip tomorrow.”
Those beloved teachers helped her daughter gain confidence to run for class president and participate in cheerleading. Athletics were also integral in that, Thomas said.
Several speakers spoke about the importance of activities, both athletic and musical. They said that those are the best means of dropout prevention, and often the main reason kids come to school. In the Board’s current budget, they cut all activities funding, in addition to “extra duties” funding for coaches to travel for away games.
The School Board has said they expect to fund activities in later versions of the budget. They also hope to retract most, if not all of the layoff notices. But with state funding still up in the air, and local funding at least temporarily restricted by the Borough government, the district decided they needed to cut staff ahead of a May 15 deadline.
At the end of her comments to the School Board, Jolene Thomas addressed what she called “political games” between the Board and the Borough Assembly.
“I am asking the School Board, and the Borough because I know many of you are listening, stop playing games with the teachers and these children as pawns,” Thomas said.
In a previous meeting, the Borough Assembly spent nearly three hours discussing funding and asking the School Board president and staff how money was being spent.
Vice Mayor Glen Thompson then proposed cutting the school budget by roughly $6 million. That’s the entire amount of local education funding the Borough can decide how to spend. The Assembly then passed that budget cut.
In an interview the day after layoff notices went out, Thompson said he wasn’t aware of the May 15 layoff notice deadline, and never intended to deprive the district of its funding. He also fully expects the Assembly to put much of that money back into the Borough’s budget.
“And so next Monday, I’m sure there’s gonna be a lot of sighs of relief once that meeting’s over,” Thompson said. “But I think everybody really needs to take a deep breath and take it easy right now.”
Thompson said their numbers showed the district might come out over budget for the current year, so the thought was to wait to see how much of the local education funding they might need to cover that.
He also said because the budget isn’t final until they hold a public hearing and vote on it a second time, it’s debatable whether the School Board needed to act on the budget amount they introduced.
“The number in the first reading doesn’t really mean that much, because it can be amended and adjusted in the second [reading],” Thompson said. “And it’s quite common to do that, especially in terms of budget.”
School Board President Stephen Bradford said in a phone interview that they gave the layoff notices in an abundance of caution in case the Borough funding doesn’t come through.
“We’ve always expected that they would fund us at some level, we just didn’t know how much,” Bradford said. “And we couldn’t take the risk of it being less than we need to be able to retain all those teachers.”
Had they not issued the layoff notices, Bradford said they would be legally required to pay out teacher contracts even if they don’t have the money.
Many of the residents who spoke at the School Board meeting were frustrated about a lack of transparency, and what seemed like last-minute budget decisions.
Bradford said that had the Borough allocated the discretionary education funding last week, this week’s layoff notices would not have been necessary. He said the budget they submitted to the Borough, which still assumed flat state funding and required cutting more than 40 positions, would not have required cutting tenured teachers.
“And a teacher with tenure has a lot more protections under state law than a non-tenured teacher,” Bradford explained.
The hope was that state funding would be approved before the later deadline to notify non-tenured teachers, and those notices could have been avoided altogether.
At the end of the School Board meeting, Bradford noted that even if state and local funding comes through, the layoff notices will have a detrimental effect on the community.
“This is a sad night for Ketchikan,” Bradford said. “Even if we can turn around in two weeks and say, ‘Oh, we’re recalling your notice,’ we’re going to lose some of those very competent, very qualified, very successful and beloved teachers. Because they’re not going to feel safe in their employment situation here in Ketchikan, because of what we had to do tonight. And I think that’s a shame.”
To anyone considering leaving town, Vice Mayor Thompson said to just give it a little time.
“Certainly people that are getting a layoff notice are freaking out, which I don’t blame them,” Thompson said. “But I guess the thing is that… this is a process, and it’s all based on timing and what’s required by statute and ordinance, and things will get fixed. There’s money available in the local education fund; it’s going to be spent on the schools.”
He said the real problem for schools is that the state has failed to increase the Base Student Allocation in line with inflation, and it’s extremely challenging to try to budget around the uncertainty of one-time funding.
Michael Fanelli is the News Director at KRBD. He can be reached at michael@krbd.org.
