In accounting terms- red ink means being in the hole. Black ink means having a surplus. GCSD has a lot of black and no red ink. The money to pay fair wages is available. Below are some recent numbers from 2019 -2021. AS 14.17.505 requires school districts to return surplus funds exceeding 10%. This requirement however was waived/exempted for COVID.
Most school districts run in the red or light black. That's why Alaska school funding is a priority for most districts- a dire lack of resources.
This is not the case with GCSD. Over the past three years- see information below. GCSD has run in the dark black ink to an average of 29.62% surplus- almost $30 million extra in the bank ( or outside the COVID exemption period any surplus above 10% is supposed to be returned to the State of Alaska) instead of funding fair wages and employment conditions.
2019-2020 GCSD had 5162.59 students enrolled w/ 66 FTE teachers, and in 2020-2021 enrollment increased to 9064 students with 91 FTE teachers. During this same time, the school overall revenue/expenses/end of the year surplus are as follows:
FY 19 revenue= $32,081,717; expenditures= $26,760,564; surplus balance = $5,321, 153 or 19.88% left over, not spent
FY 20 revenue= $33,673,819 ; expenditures= $27,997,727; surplus balance = $5,676,092 or 20.27% left over, not spent
FY 21 revenue= $55,415,416; expenditures= $37,258,646; surplus balance = $18,156,770 or 48.73% left over, not spent
AS 14.17.505. Fund Balance in School Operating Fund.
(a) A district may not accumulate in a fiscal year an unreserved portion of its year-end fund balance in its school operating fund, as defined by department regulations, that is greater than 10 percent of its expenditures for that fiscal year.
(b) The department shall review each district's annual audit under AS 14.14.050 for the preceding fiscal year to ascertain its year-end operating fund balance. The amount by which the unreserved portion of that balance exceeds the amount permitted in (a) of this section shall be deducted from the state aid that would otherwise be paid to the district in the current fiscal year.
Remember that very large percentage of these "overages" have gone into the capital funds budget as allowed by statute, so that we can fund additional office/building space for IDEA and structural projects in Galena. Yes, the idea of this persuasion article is correct. The District is healthy and can afford to pay all of it's workers. But also, we need to account for capital projects and capital rollover, which are not necessarily included in these budget numbers/percentages. With COVID a lot of funding wasn't rolled into Capital funding immediately because the state waived the 10% rule. With new building spaces in IDEA in multiple cities, and with projects projected for Galena, the percentage will be much lower this year…