The school board for the Fairbanks area district passed a spending plan Tuesday for the 2026 fiscal year that banks on state lawmakers overriding Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s unprecedented veto of basic formula funding for education.
School board member Bobby Burgess was first to float the idea, acknowledging that making the budget assumption is a political tactic. He said he hopes it sends a clear message about the district’s expectations.
“We need to get the point across to our legislators that we cannot cut anymore, that we need them to follow through on their promises, uphold their votes, and make sure that the students of Alaska have the resources that we need,” he said in a brief interview after Tuesday’s meeting.
In May, state lawmakers overrode Dunleavy’s veto of a bipartisan, compromise education bill that raised the base student allocation, or BSA, by $700. That per-student contribution to school districts is a central component of the state’s education funding formula.
Legislators successfully cast out the governor’s initial, policy-related veto on a 46-14 vote, needing only a two-thirds majority.
Dunleavy then released line item vetoes in June as part of the state budget process, lopping $200 off the newly-increased BSA enshrined in state law. That reduction, if accounted for, corresponds to a $4.5 million decline in revenue from the state for the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District compared to last year, throwing the district back into a deficit of what school officials estimated to be $1.75 million.
State lawmakers are expected to consider overriding the governor’s budget-related veto in January, in the middle of the school year. Doing so will require a three-quarters majority, or 45 votes, meaning the margin is slim.
But Burgess’s budget amendment assumes that margin – and the $700 BSA increase – stay intact. It gained broad support from other school board members Tuesday, passing 6-1.
Superintendent Luke Meinert called the move “unorthodox” during the meeting, but also didn’t speak against it.
“I think it is a tool to communicate to the legislature and the larger community what that state revenue, we feel like, should be,” he said. “It’s definitely unorthodox in my time in education.”
The effects of the budget maneuver are indeed more symbolic than tangible.
It does allow the district to put off inking plans to spend about $1.7 million from its estimated $11 million in savings to cover the veto-induced budget hole, as had been the leading idea Tuesday prior to Burgess’s amendment. But if the override vote fails in January, that savings draw will likely be the lever the board uses to rebalance the district’s budget.
Still, Tuesday’s meeting brought a provisional end to a challenging budget season in which the board had to pull the district out of a more than $16 million projected deficit. That monthslong process included shutting down three elementary schools, increasing class sizes and contracting out custodial services, which meant laying off staff.
Among the final tweaks approved Tuesday were a $127,000 cut that dropped a vacant head teacher position at Star of the North from the budget, and contributing $125,000 to the Coalition for Education Equity’s pending lawsuit. The nonprofit has said it’s preparing to sue the state for failing to adequately fund education following Dunleavy’s BSA veto.
The board’s final budget also turned down proposals from the administration to account for the vetoed funding by cutting another six teacher positions, which would effectively increase calculated class sizes by 0.5 students.