Bering Strait School Board approves tight budget

By Anna Lionas |

The Bering Strait School District approved a $69.4 million budget for the 2025/26 school year, after months of working to balance a deficit budget made more difficult by a fluctuating promise of funding from the state.
The district needs to submit an approved budget to the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development by July 15, but Superintendent Tammy Dodd said revisions can be made at any time.
Last month, Governor Mike Dunleavy line-item vetoed the school funding bill passed by the Alaska Legislature, reducing the amount districts would receive per student by $200. This combined with already increasing operating costs meant BSSD had to cut $6 million from the operating budget.
“If we go forward with everything that’s in here now today it does not mean that we can’t change that later on down the road,” Dodd said.
Cuts were made across the board with the largest being almost $2 million in classified staff — non-teacher employees — hours to five and a half each day and reduced their overall contract days by 10, cutting both salary and insurance costs.
“The reason we chose five and a half hours because once you go down to five and a half hours some of the benefits packages of insurance and things like that, that come with it are eliminated as well,” Dodd said.
Another large cut took out seven teaching positions, removing ones that hadn’t been filled in multiple schools, freeing up $1.5 million. Brevig Mission and Gambell schools didn’t get their assistant principal positions filled, for another $350,000.
The activities department took a $320,000 slash. District Academic Decathlon, Science Fair and Spelling Bee events will all take place virtually. Only six teams will be sent to basketball regionals and for state basketball only the minimum number of team members will travel, around eight students. 
After all the budget reductions there was still a $505,000 deficit, which will be taken out of the capital projects fund.
Dodd said the budget was worked on over a period of time with the help of consultants. Board members expressed a desire to see a deeper breakdown of office personnel and their hours.
“The directive from the board was to stay away from the students and also one of the things we requested was some like-size staffing listings from other districts, just to see how their district offices function, but we didn’t receive that,” Board Member Silas Paniptchuk said.
After the board approved the budget, Dodd introduced the newly hired Assistant Superintendent Amy Brower. Brower previously served as the Superintendent for Dillingham City School District and resigned this spring because of the “ongoing dysfunction, lack of collaboration and unhealthy work environment,” as reported by KDLG Radio.
The board then discussed a proposed contract with Kenai Aviation to supply pilots and insurance for their plane for a cost of $545,000, over $33,000 more than last year.
After going out to bid this May, Kenai Aviation was the only bidder. Board Chair Willow Olson said she has reservations about the contract. “I’ve been concerned about this process from the beginning, we asked back in March that an RFP be put out it was put out in late May and only for a week, and there were, in my opinion, things that favor Kenai Aviation,” Olson said. “I think if it had been done properly in March we would have gotten more responses.”
Olson asked if Kenai Aviation would provide another plane if the district plane was down for maintenance, but Dodd was unsure.
The board tabled voting on a contract until Dodd could provide more information. The meeting concluded after about an hour, no further action was taken.