The Juneau School District could be in a $450,000 budget hole this fiscal year if the governor\u2019s vetoes stick, but school officials are not worrying just yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy initial thoughts were, let\u2019s figure out exactly what the cuts are, what their impact is, when they\u2019re likely to occur, and then sit down and strategize, but not do that before that,\u201d Juneau Superintendent Mark Miller said told the Empire by phone Tuesday. \u201cWe have unfortunately spent hundreds of man hours game-planning for scenarios that never took place.\u201d<\/p>\n
Included in Gov. Bill Walker\u2019s roughly $1.3 billion in budget vetoes announced last week were cuts to education funding. For Juneau, that amounts to about $3 million in school debt reimbursement, $250,000 in student transportation and $200,000 in school operation funding. The Legislature meets up again in another special session July 11 and its actions could impact the vetoes.<\/p>\n
[With budget at stake, Gov. Walker contemplates vetoing PFD checks<\/a>]<\/p>\n The school debt reimbursement, which is the largest potential cut, does not directly affect the school district because it comes out of the City and Borough of Juneau budget.<\/p>\n [With vetoes, Walker slashes into city budget<\/a>]<\/p>\n But, \u201cthe consequences of what they\u2019re doing may affect us,\u201d the district\u2019s finance head David Means said Wednesday. \u201cThey can\u2019t change, at this point in time, the appropriation for general school operations or activities or anything like that, but they might reduce the amount they set for us for capital improvements.\u201d<\/p>\n CBJ finance director Bob Bartholomew said the governor\u2019s vetoes were \u201cmuch bigger numbers than we expected, so we\u2019ll have to make adjustments.\u201d<\/p>\n What those adjustments are remain unknown at this point.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t feel like we\u2019re in a crisis but we know that we\u2019re going to have to start adjusting sooner than we have thought we were,\u201d Bartholomew said Tuesday by phone.<\/p>\n He said he\u2019ll present a budget update to the Assembly Finance Committee during an Aug. 10 meeting, something that was planned anyway. At that point, Bartholomew said he\u2019ll get direction from the Assembly on how to approach the potential budget gap.<\/p>\n \u201cYour general options are to raise revenues, reduce expenditures or use savings. Those three options will be on the table, but we haven\u2019t quantified anything beyond that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The other $450,000 in student transportation and school operation funding that could get cut as a result of the governor\u2019s vetoes would directly affect the school district\u2019s Fiscal Year 17 budget.<\/p>\n For student transportation, Juneau gets a little more than $3 million from the state and about $50,000 from the city.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll probably have to take money from our operating fund budget to help subsidize the pupil transportation costs,\u201d Means said. The same is true for the cut in school operation funding.<\/p>\n \u201cWe did budget for a little under $500,000 of fund balance carryover at the end of FY 17, so we do have a fund balance that is in theory large enough to sustain this $450,000 shortfall,\u201d Means said.<\/p>\n At the end of FY 16, which just ended June 30, the district had about $2.3 million in carryover funding, Means said. That came from under-spending in previous fiscal years and a one-time $500,000 appropriation from the CBJ in 2015. About $1.8 million of that is being used to support programs in the FY 17 budget. That would leave about $500,000 in carryover funding for FY 17.<\/p>\n At this point in time, Means said the potential budget cuts will not affect any teaching positions or any other budget items.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not going to make any dramatic changes in the next couple of months to our budget,\u201d he said. \u201cOur budget is established.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 Contact reporter Lisa Phu at 523-2246 or lisa.phu@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Juneau School District could be in a $450,000 budget hole this fiscal year if the governor\u2019s vetoes stick, but school officials are not worrying just yet. \u201cMy initial thoughts were, let\u2019s figure out exactly what the cuts are, what their impact is, when they\u2019re likely to occur, and then sit down and strategize, but … Continue reading Governor’s vetoes mean $450,000 less for Juneau schools<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-19301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19301"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=19301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}