After an outpouring of passionate community testimony, Wrangell’s assembly has approved a more than $300,000 increase in funding to the community’s schools in the coming year, for a total of $1,617,629.
Over the last five years, Wrangell’s small public school district has lost seven teaching positions, and several support staff and paraprofessional positions.
“There is no viable way for us to provide a level of education that our children deserve and that Wrangell should expect when we are down 30% of our teaching staff and in the last five years and more than 35% of our support staff,” said Laurie Hagelman, a Wrangell teacher.
Hagelman told the borough assembly at a meeting earlier this month (May 10) that it’s an unsustainable trend, even though the student population has shrunk. Wrangell has lost about 30 students over the last five years. Currently, there are around 260 students enrolled in Wrangell’s three public schools.
“The world is growing and expanding and Wrangell has only cut, cut, cut in our education to where we are at bare-bones,” Hagelman said. “That is not the Wrangell that I grew up in, and not one that I would want for my children.”
This year, the school district requested an increase of over $200,000 to the local government’s financial contribution to the schools. School Board President Dave Wilson said the district has basically made every cut it can to try and balance the books.
“We’ve been working hard to reevaluate how we do things, how we can still offer a high-quality education,” Wilson told the assembly. “However, we are limited in just what we can do. We’re constantly fighting to stay alive. Without additional funding, we will be deficit spending. We will be bleeding an arterial bleed that needs more than Band-Aids. We need an infusion of funds to help us reestablish the highest quality of education we’re capable of offering here at Wrangell. And believe me, we’re capable of great things here.”
Wilson said that at the moment, Wrangell schools are so short-staffed that classes sometimes have to be combined if there’s an illness or teacher absence. There just aren’t enough subs. Teachers and support staff have to forego breaks or prep periods to make sure students have proper supervision and support.
Tasha Morse is one of those teachers. She’s the only full-time educator teaching kindergartners through seniors in high school, with music classes at the elementary, middle and high schools. A couple of years ago, she was also asked to take over teaching art at the high school but that meant the school could no longer offer jazz band.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not here asking for extra money for teachers,” Morse said, “We’re not looking for a raise. I’m looking out for kids in my band, my choir, and in my art room. These kids live for music and art. I’ve had kids tell me that music was the only reason that they came to school. When we don’t fund our schools, and we lose programs like music, art and shop, we lose the reason that some of our kids even come to school.”
Morse celebrated the efforts of art students at the high school, whose shoe designs won the art department at least $15,000 in a nationwide contest earlier this month.
“These kids see the meaning in art and music and shop and they’re willing to do these hard things to keep them going,” Morse said, “But it shouldn’t be on our students for this funding.”
Teacher Mikki Angerman added that it’s hard for the community to attract families to come and stay, or incentivise homeschooling kids to come back to in-person school, if the schools can’t offer anything but reading, writing and math. Angerman compared the schools to the community’s heart.
“Help us, be with us, be with the city,” Angerman asked. “Feed the heart of this community. Because I swear if you feed the heart of the community, everything else works just like the human body. And we are here to do the work, I can promise you that, but we can’t do it alone.”
Parent and coach Kaelene Harrison agreed. She told the assembly she has five children currently in Wrangell’s schools.
“I’m a member of this community that truly deeply cares about it,” Harrison said. “I’ve seen what happens to communities when schools get shut down. I’ve seen a community die as soon as the school gets shut down. Families leave. And you can’t support a community without families that are growing, and that will bring a future to their community. Our students are our future, and I want the best for my kids.”
Harrison asked assembly members to think about their own kids or grandkids, and ask themselves what they want to be offered in schools.
“Right now, I have to ask myself the same thing. Can Wrangell schools offer my children what they need, just what they need, not the extras, what they need to be good citizens, to grow, and to progress and to be challenged, to go out and change the world? Because that’s what we want our kids to do,” Harrison continued.
The assembly heard the call for more support. Originally, it was set to discuss a $1.5 million contribution to the schools in the coming fiscal year, but assembly members pointed out that sum was only about $25,000 below the maximum local contribution, which is set by the state. Why not bump funding to the maximum, just over $1.6 million, they asked?
Assembly member Dave Powell said he’d like to have more discussions with the school district about how to ensure the school’s long-term sustainability and bring back programs.
“I don’t want my grandkids coming up to lose anything,” Powell said, “And I agree. I mean, you cannot have a mediocre school and draw people into this [town].”
Other assembly members, like Bob Dalrymple, agreed. Dalrymple said that one piece of the puzzle is working out sustainable local funding sources for the school district. But he said he also feels that the borough could be doing more to lobby the state government for increased education funding.
“I guess to me, really looking at it, we should be much more active in trying to go after higher levels of support,” Dalrymple said.
For the last few years, Wrangell’s local government hasn’t funded the schools through local tax revenues. It paid its local school contribution by passing on federal funds (called Secure Rural Schools funds, or SRS). But a recent change to local tax code set up a fund to funnel 20% of the borough’s sales tax revenue to the public schools, and save funds for future budgets.
Borough finance director Mason Villarma says the goal is to not deplete the SRS accounts too quickly, and get the community back to contributing tax dollars directly to the schools. The $1,617,629 million contribution is a bit of a stretch, he said – it’s an increase of $317,000 compared to what the borough contributed last year.
“As far as capacity to sustainably fun at this kind of level, I think we kind of got to put our heads together on what that means,” Villarma explained. “I mean, if we were funding it entirely from sales tax and SRS together, I think we can get there. But to fund it completely from the borough general revenues, which are namely sales tax and property tax, those revenues would have to increase to sustain this level of funding, essentially, as well as provide all our other general government services.”
Superintendent Bill Burr told the assembly that increased funding could help to decrease class sizes, bring back electives, hire more support staff, and boost the district’s budget for sports travel – a necessity, if student-athletes on the island are going to compete against other schools.
Wrangell’s local contribution to the schools will come both from SRS funding and local sales tax contributions this year – $741,000 from local sales tax, and the rest of the $1.6 million from Secure Rural Schools.
Wrangell’s borough government is still working through its budgeting process. It’s set to adopt a budget for the coming year on June 14.
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