Administrators are proposing to close the gap by increasing class sizes by 2 and a 1/2 students across all grades and firing more than 150 people.
Chief Operating Officer, Andreu Degraw, told the Board of Education at a work session Monday evening, that the state per-student funding provides the biggest chunk of the budget.
But enrollment has dropped over the past decade:
“Going back to 2014, a little more than 14, 000 students, and fast forward to current years, the 2025 number 11, 805, and then the projected number that we have is 11, 626 for FY 26,” Degraw said.
That’s a lot of numbers, but the result is twenty-three-hundred (2,374) fewer students. So logically, said Degraw, revenue from the state has dropped accordingly.
“You know, back to 2014, we were over 220 million. Fast forward to 2026, basically a 30 million drop in revenue. That's, that's a significant number. Especially when you take inflation into consideration.”
The drop in funding based on the student body is only part of the picture. Degraw says its about $6 million. He explained that the bigger chunk of the deficit -- $10 milllion – was from increased costs outpacing revenue.
The proposed budget has some assumptions built in:… including that the state’s funding – through the Base Student Allocation – will not increase from $5,960, but that the legislature will pass a temporary boost of $680 per student for the year.
There are discussions in the legislature, including House Bill 69, that would permanently raise the Base Student Allocation.
Degraw also assumes a $2 million increase in funding from the Fairbanks North Star Borough.
“Assumption that we've made is a 2 million increase in the local contribution. So that would be going from 58 million current year up to 60 million for FY26.”
The school board has just begun the budget process. The administration formally proposed the plan at a regular board meeting Tuesday night. The board voted in earlier this month to close three elementary schools and scale back a fourth. In December, the board voted to outsource custodial services to a private company and is terminating about 70 district custodians.
The board’s deadline for voting on the budget is at the end of March. The entire document is posted on the school district’s website.
