Mat-Su School Budget Foresees Structural Deficit

The Mat-Su Borough School District has adopted a preliminary budget for the fiscal year beginning in July, but it could see significant changes.

In total, the school district’s budget is more than $235 million.  The current proposal asks the Mat-Su Borough Assembly for about $53 million of those dollars, which is an increase of about $1.4 million from last year.  The rest of the funding for Mat-Su schools comes from the State of Alaska.  In the budget proposal, district officials note the fact that the school budget is required to be submitted by the beginning of April, weeks before the legislative session ends.  This year, the district used numbers from Governor Bill Walker’s state budget proposal to craft its own budget.  Since then, additional cuts have been made to the education budget by the state senate in Juneau.

In this year’s budget documents, Mat-Su School District officials claim that, using current funding assumptions and extending them forward, the district will enter a period of structural deficit.  Current projections show an annual shortfall of between eight and ten million dollars each year from 2017 through 2019.  Those figures assume an annual three percent funding increase from the borough and no further increases or decreases by the state.

The Borough Assembly and School Board met jointly earlier this week to discuss the school budget.