The Cordova City Council last week voted to increase its contribution to the Cordova School District by approximately $181,000 for next school year, however the council is split on how the city will come up with that money.
Both the city and the school district have been forced to make substantial cuts in services and personnel in recent years, each shoestring budget a precarious balancing act as the economy continues to negatively impact school districts and municipalities statewide.
The school district originally asked the city for an increase of $362,000 over last year’s contribution, to $2.55 million, which would have included about $2.34 million in cash and $205,000 in in-kind donations. In the end the council agreed to up its contribution for next year, but just by half of the district’s requested amount.
Council members in the coming weeks will decide how the city will come up with the additional $181,000 for the school district, which will most likely be by raising property taxes or dipping into the city’s permanent fund.
Council Members Mike Mickelson and Wendy Ranney last week expressed concern with the prospect of raising the city’s mill rate, which determines the property tax rate.
“We’re trying to squeeze blood out of a stone and people just don’t have the resources to contribute to this,” Mickelson said during the council’s May 6 meeting. “There’s a lot of people in this community that are barely making it, and I just don’t think this is the time to be asking them to contribute more money.”
However, others opined the cost of education should be considered a community lift.
“For me I look at the sustainable solution, which is increasing the mill rate,” Council Member Kasey Kinsman said, noting the quality of Cordova’s education keeps many families in town.
In an effort to help the school district stay afloat in the current academic year, the City Council last year increased the 2025 property tax mill levy from 9.93 to 11.44 mills.
A mill levy is a property tax rate wherein one mill represents $1 of tax for every $1,000 of a property’s assessed value. For example: With a 11.44 mill rate in Cordova, the owner of a $400,000 home owed $4,576 in property taxes for the 2025 season.
Kinsman suggested increasing the mill rate by another 0.75 mills to come up with extra funding for the school district.
“This brings us into the future,” he said.
Council Member Debra Adams, a longtime employee at the district, suggested pulling $181,000 from the city’s permanent fund. But others said that could be risky.
“I have a hard time pulling from the permanent fund,” said Council Member David Zastrow. “We look at $3 million and we think that’s a lot of money but if we have some major catastrophe with our infrastructure that would go very fast.”
In order to balance its own budget, the city last year had to leave multiple positions unfilled, scale down on its contributions to various community entities, and even lay off two part-time employees.
“We need to think about the impact that this would have to the city, as well as to the school,” City Manager Samantha Greenwood told council members last week. “You know where we ended the year last year – laying people off. And 2027 isn’t a great outlook right now.”
Similarly, Cordova’s Board of Education members are also figuring out how the less-than-requested contribution from the city will impact the district’s overall budget for the upcoming school year.
Cordova Schools Superintendent Alex Russin said during the board’s May 13 meeting the district will have to come up with more budget reductions to address their $1.2 million deficit – reductions that will likely include leaving one teacher position unfilled, capping students at one school-sanctioned away trip per activity, and cutting down on departmental spending.
Additionally, the district is toying with drawing from both scholarship fund and fund balance reserves, $175,000 and $150,000 respectively, in order to balance the budget. The district also expects approximately $20,000 in revenue for work Cordova’s food service director will be doing with the Unalaska City School District next year.
But even by cutting more costs and drawing on reserves, the district is still contending with a deficit of more than $19,000.
Board Members Emma Merritt and Kate Trudeau emphasized the importance of staffing Cordova schools, especially since more kids are coming up through the district. Merritt asked for a version of the budget that included filling the open teacher role.
“We know we’re going to have more kids but we don’t know where the funding is going to be, so it’s that balance,” Russin said.
He noted the average teacher’s salary and benefits package totals about $130,000, so it’s not a small lift.
“One of the challenges or considerations with staff is – do you want to hire a teacher to plug a hole for one year only to then have to riff them potentially next year?” he said. “We talk about those things administratively.”
Russin did add, however, that according to enrollment and class size standards the district is fully staffed for next year.
The superintendent and his staff will work on getting the $19,000 deficit down to zero in the next month before the school board’s June regular meeting. The district is also keeping an eye on the state Legislature, in the event it passes one-time school funding packages.
“We should be able to absorb that (deficit), or we can make some reductions or some changes in expenditures to get that down to zero,” Russin said. “It’s fairly fluid right now, but it’s sort of like gelatin about an hour after you put it in the fridge – it’s getting pretty firm.”
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