State and Federal Legislative Priorities 2018

2018 State Legislative Priorities

1. Provide sustained, timely, and adequate educational funding for Alaska’s students

The State of Alaska continues to experience fiscal challenges; a multi-revenue fiscal plan to eliminate the highs and lows of oil dependent funding must be completed.  Adequately funding public education is a legal responsibility of the State of Alaska legislature and is its primary financial concern.  The education funding plan must be consistent, reliable and predictable.  The Alaska legislature must develop annual funding for public education in a much timelier manner or risk putting our schools in an uncertain position with hiring high quality educators.  The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District is accountable for the dollars entrusted to it and supports measures that will allow our district to operate in a more efficient manner.  The district stands ready to work with the legislature to find the right solutions for solving today’s fiscal challenge.

2. Control health care costs to school districts

The cost of health care for KPBSD increases every year.  KPBSD has worked hard to find efficiencies to lower these costs; it has not been able to slow the overall increases.  More funds for health care reduces the amount of funding that can be devoted to the classroom. KPBSD stands ready to work with the Legislature to explore all options to control the increase of health care costs to all districts.

2018 Federal Priorities

1. Fully Fund Federal Title Programs

It is with grave concern that the proposed FY18 Federal Budget significantly reduces major components of Title Funding while also shifting public school funding for privatization efforts.  Developing a high quality work force has been a priority in our district, but the proposed federal budget would reduce Carl Perkins funding by 15%.  This would severely hamper our efforts in work force development.

Title I funding is slated to be significantly shifted into a program to allow public monies to be used for a new school-choice program which, in essence, provides vouchers for private school tuition.  This shift will compromise our district’s ability to meet the needs of economically disadvantaged students and our successful pre-k program.  If the proposed budget is implemented our Title I program would be reduced by 4%. 

The proposed United State Education Department (USED) FY18 budget also looks to eliminate Title II funding.  We utilize this program to support our professional learning efforts with all teachers to improve instruction in the classroom.  We support new teachers with instructional coaches and also use some of this program to reduce our primary grades pupil teacher ratios when we experience larger classes than expected.  Complete elimination of Title II will severely impact quality instruction and class sizes in our district.

Our district strongly opposes the cuts to the federal programs, which are already currently underfunded. 

2. School Choice

KPBSD has always supported parent choice and features open enrollment district-wide along with very successful charter schools.  We work hard with KPBSD homeschool families to support a quality education anywhere, anytime.  The current USED FY18 budget proposal siphons critical funding from public schools to promote privatized schools.  We are concerned that this venture creates a playing field that is not level.  Privatization efforts have not required accountability in the same manner as public schools.  Without clear rules governing how all schools will be held accountable after receiving public monies, our district strongly opposes the proposed Federal school choice program (FOCUS).