The Fairbanks North Star Borough School District Board of Education on Wednesday unanimously adopted a roughly $232 million recommended budget for the 2027 fiscal year. Unlike many other districts in Alaska, which are facing major cuts, Fairbanks schools are on track to make a number of restorations next year.
The school board’s recommended budget is due to the borough assembly by April 1 annually. It’s a middle point between the district administration’s proposed budget and the school board’s final approved budget, which has to be submitted to the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development by mid-July.
After years of overcoming multi-million dollar deficits by making deep cuts, like closing schools and increasing class sizes, the board’s recommended budget calls for a number of add-backs and investments. It builds on and tweaks what administrators brought forward in February, which included about $6.75 million of restorations and a $2.6 million surplus.
The school board tackled the recommended budget in marathon meetings last week. Ahead of the vote to adopt it, members talked about how refreshing it felt to debate what should be added to the district — instead of taken away.
“Thank you to all the educators that have suffered through all of the changes, but hopefully this is like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,” member Loa Carroll-Hubbard said before the vote.
The recommended budget would fund an additional 33.6 full-time equivalent classroom teachers compared to the current fiscal year. That would decrease calculated class sizes at all grade levels – from 26 to 23 for elementary, 29 to 27 for middle and 32 to 30 for high school. The document would also fund six new music teacher FTEs, 10 more student behavior technicians FTEs and 10 more elementary tutor FTEs, among other things.
Board member Morgan Dulian said she’s particularly excited about the prospect of restoring elementary band and orchestra and expanding the program at the secondary level. The arts are essential for students, she said.
“It helps them understand how to try and fail and stand up and try again in a very supportive way that I really don’t see in other places, and I think it’s one of the most critical things that builds resilience and brings joy into people’s lives,” Dulian said before the vote.
The recommended budget also updates the administration’s proposed revenue assumptions for funds from federal, state and local sources. And this year, the board is asking for approximately $65.7 million from the borough assembly – roughly $3 million more than the district got from the borough last budget cycle.
About $1.7 million of that increase is for offsetting a reduction in state revenue related to higher assessed property valuations, a variable in the state’s education funding formula, according to the district. The board opted to request another $1.2 million from the borough after discussing a transportation subsidy some members argued shouldn’t be paid for from district coffers.
The recommended budget isn’t a concrete spending plan. It signals what the board hopes to fund if the revenue assumptions prove accurate, but those are subject to change between now and the final budget in the summer. It also doesn’t account for some potential district expenditures, namely the possibility of opening two new charter schools next school year. Opening Two Rivers HomeSTEAD and Pearl Creek STEAM Charter School would cost the district a combined roughly $4 million, according to 2025 district estimates.