Facing an $8.5 million deficit, the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District is once again forced to consider consolidating and closing schools to balance the budget.
During a quarterly work session on Jan. 13, the KPBSD Board of Education and district staff held a preliminary discussion on potential impacts and savings if they closed Paul Banks Elementary in Homer and Seward Middle School.
In his presentation to the board, district Superintendent Clayton Holland said that consolidation of schools “is not about short term savings alone,” and that decisions needed to center around protecting student educational opportunities while minimizing disruption to students, families and communities. He described criteria used to identify options for consolidation that would “result in the lowest impact and greatest overall benefit,” including options that would not add new bus routes or significantly increase student transportation time, kept students within their existing communities, increased opportunities and options for students, did not close the only school in a community, and allowed facilities to remain viable for other public or educational uses.
Holland said that “only a small number” of consolidation scenarios met this criteria, and thus put forward Paul Banks and Seward Middle Schools as options for closure this year.
He also outlined projected savings to the district under these scenarios. Closing Paul Banks would save the district approximately $756,297 in the first and second years, but by year five, that number would decrease to about $132,000. Closing Seward Middle School would result in savings of over $405,000 for the first two years, but by year five the district would see a net loss of approximately $43,000.
“It’s not an earthshaker for the district. It is a change,” he said.
One of the “pros” to closing Seward Middle School, Holland said, would include no longer requiring principal Henry Burns to split his time between Seward’s middle and high schools. Seward Middle School has also “chronically” struggled with special education and paraprofessional staffing.
“In that community, nursing has come up — right now one person is split between three schools,” he said.
On the other hand, per the current staffing formula, closing Seward Middle and consolidating its student body with Seward High School would likely result in further staffing reductions at the high school.
“There’s still more to go from, questions that I committed to helping finance to (answer) before moving forward,” Holland said.
Discussion held during the Jan. 13 meeting outlined the Paul Banks closure as including a consolidation with West Homer Elementary School — but, Holland said, there were questions there that would need to be resolved as well.
“There were some thoughts about how Paul Banks’ population is going up — which is actually true that they’ve grown, (they’re) a very popular school right now. It’s far from capacity, but it is popular,” he said.
West Homer also currently houses the Fireweed Academy charter school. They would have to be moved out in order for Paul Banks students to move in, but Fireweed’s lease is not up for another year.
“The piece that we have to grapple with in this scenario really is that we have one more year left on a lease with Fireweed, who occupies four classrooms at West Homer. Fireweed would have to be moved out of that building and we would have to break that lease with them,” Holland said. “Do we break that lease? Personally I think it’s bad business to do it that way. Do we move that full consolidation to another year (when) that lease is naturally up? Or pivot to McNeil? It’s not real clean.”
Holland noted that previous discussions included closing McNeil Canyon Elementary School, but said that the district now is “operating under the philosophy of not transporting for a long haul or adding transportation routes.” Closing McNeil would require instituting two new transportation routes unless the district “made a wholesale change to bussing in that area.”
Comparatively, Paul Banks is also an older building and has more deferred maintenance than McNeil.
Board member Sarah Douthit asked whether the district would lose fewer staff positions through either consolidations or increasing the pupil-teacher ratio.
“For the best student outcomes, we need as many educators as we can,” she said. “So let’s try to take an avenue in which we will not lose many educators.”
Board president Jason Tauriainen said that the district would see savings from consolidations largely through a reduction in building costs, but the “only way to find savings through PTR is by raising PTR to a point where we reduce staff. There’s no other way to find savings in a PTR increase.”
Holland clarified that some savings do come from consolidation of staff when combining schools.
“Everything we’re not doing results in a loss somewhere else,” Holland said. “Those cost savings will come from a reduction somewhere. What we do with this will have an impact on the overall picture where we have to drop our expenditures down to match revenue.”
The board moved unanimously at the end of the meeting to further consider closing Seward Middle School and one Homer school — likely either Paul Banks or McNeil Canyon Elementary. Board members also unanimously agreed to reopen the discussion on closing one school in the central peninsula, likely either Sterling or Tustumena Elementary.
Board member Mica VanBuskirk said that she would like to see the district make these decisions “early on” in order to give schools time to prepare.
“I think ultimately at the end of the day, there is not going to be anything that is popular for the adults,” Holland said.
“I do see this as a multi-year process. There will be a sequence of things happening, minus a massive influx of people back into our schools or something financially huge happening. This is year two, now — it’s not stopping, we’re moving on. We have to.”
Tauriainen said that the board is trying to find savings where they can, but they may still have to have PTR discussions “if we don’t get some help from the borough or the state.”
School consolidations will likely be on the board’s agenda in March for action. The board also decided in a separate work session discussion on Jan. 13 to move toward ending district support of pool operations, effective June 30. That discussion will come before the board again for action in either February or March.
KPBSD will be hosting a series of budget meetings with the community across the district. Staff, parents and community members are invited to give input.
The Homer community meeting will be held Tuesday, Feb. 10 at 6 p.m. in the Homer High School library. The central peninsula meeting will be held Tuesday, Feb. 17 at 6 p.m. in the Kenai Central High School library. The Seward community meeting will be held Wednesday, Feb. 18 at 6 p.m. in the Seward High School library.
Additional information and the number to call in with questions will be posted on the Events Calendar on the KPBSD website. As new budget information becomes available, it will also be posted on the KPBSD Finance page.
Full recordings of the Jan. 12 and Jan. 13 work sessions are available on the KPBSD BoardDocs website.