Any cuts to the KIB contribution to KIBSD budget, if they absolutely must be made, should be minimal; any tax increase should be modest.
Granted, I’m new to this local conversation, having recently returned to the island after a 9-month furlough in Texas, which you may be aware, is experiencing education cuts of apocalyptic proportions (how’s that for overstatement?). My research and deliberation on this is thin as a result, so apologies all around.
First, I’ll oblige myself to remind the Assembly of the inartistic logic that goes along with education funding, and then I’ll argue how the increasing epidemic of poverty in Kodiak obliges the Assembly to reassess any discussions of decreasing the borough’s contribution to KIBSD.
- · Education is KIB’s #1 priority. It’s listed first in our Strategic Plan, holding a prominent position above all other responsibilities. We need not be reminded ad nauseum of the ROI in education—in terms of local economics, academics, arts, and posterity.
- · While Superintendent McDonald’s fiscal assessment of the effects of a dramatic reduction in KIB contribution (only $4.5 million?) may be overstated in terms of personnel layoffs (i.e., not looking at other districts’/industries’ creative solutions to budget cutbacks will take the sting out: furloughs, salary reductions, burden-sharing with other like-institutions [Kodiak College, for instance, in the form of an extended Early College high school for KHS juniors and seniors]), there is certainly a logic behind the overstatements. The numbers indicate a delicate web of interdependence among Borough responsibilities and anxieties. Slash one, and they all become slashed in delayed aftershocks. Are these particular aftershocks (of proposed education cuts) we are willing to bear and defer to future Assemblies and Boards? The earthquake would be bad enough, I’m afraid. Surely, if the Borough is indeed facing such a dramatic shortfall, other, less prioritized responsibilities with more bearable aftershocks should face the ax. No, not education.
- · If we are having such a difficult time organizing ourselves around common priorities, developing creative solutions, and predicting and responding to our fiscal outlook now, I think it behooves us to maintain and increase investments in systems and institutions, such as local education, that will help us avoid these problems and then face them with assurance and reason when they do come up. Setting precedents like what has been proposed by KIB will only guarantee that we’ll be facing the same conversations in perpetuity. And these conversations are tiring.
- · Few people envy you and the decisions you have to make for us.
One last plea to maintain funding, and this concerns our students directly and the poverty epidemic. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (Dept. of Ed)
· KIBSD students are increasingly affected by poverty. As an indicator of local poverty rates, the free/reduced lunch program allows children from families with incomes at or below 130% of the poverty level to qualify for the program.
o In 2010
§ 37% of KHS students were eligible for free/reduced lunch
§ 45% of KMS students were eligible for free/reduced lunch
§ 60% of Main Elementary students were eligible for free/reduced lunch
§ District-wide, we had nearly 45% eligibility
o In other words, nearly half of KIBSD students live in poverty
o While Alaska ranks lower than the national average, if Kodiak Island Borough were a state, we would feature a per capita .075 eligibility, which ties Oklahoma for #4, below Mississippi, Louisiana, and New Mexico.
I know, I have a PhD in English and an M.Ed, not a degree in socioeconomics, but these numbers concern me. And if you look at the 10-year trend, these numbers are not going down.
In The Working Poor by David Shipler (of which I’ve attached the relevant chapter and strongly encourage you to read), he explores how interconnected poverty is with local public education systems, and how children living in poverty are much more vulnerable to cuts in education and other social services than middle-class children. When I look at the Borough Assembly, the City Council, the School Board, and school administration, I don’t see groups that can feel the great impact that even the slightest change in funding can have on this delicate half of our students. I see groups that can bear the hit. My family and I can certainly bear that hit, too.
However, nearly half of the kids in our school district are not like us. Please remember that.
Any cut in a school program (be it personnel, admin support, technology, facilities, etc.) echoes magnanimously in the lives of these kids and their families. Their families are already on thin ice, every day, every paycheck.
It’s not like us in the other half, who can spend that extra time with our kids helping them with schoolwork, who can take them to paid extracurricular activities, hire tutors, etc. The invisible kids in our district don’t have that support anywhere else but in our schools. And if we chip away at that support, we are chipping away at the lives of nearly half of our future borough.
To paraphrase Shipler, we may have the skill to support these kids, and help break this increasingly dangerous cycle of local poverty, but we just don’t have the will.
Or do we?
Maintaining significant funding of our education system will show that we have both.
Regards,
Dr. Jared Griffin
