School Board reports funding miscommunication to Assembly
Posted by Katherine Rose | Mar 8, 2021
A comparison Superintendent John Holst reviewed with assembly members at Thursday’s meeting. The left shows how the assembly funded schools last year (FY21). On the right is the funding package approved by the Assembly in February. And in the center is what the School District intended to request, an increase of around $500,000.
Editor’s note: This script was amended from the version originally broadcast to include more context around the general fund budget and clarify where money to cover the projected $1.9 Million dollar deficit may come from, including a $1.5 Million surplus from last fiscal year.
Posted by Robert Woolsey, KCAW | Jan 15, 2021
According to interim Superintendent John Holst, around a dozen of Sitka’s senior teachers are eligible for early retirement, sevreral of whom work a the high school. (KCAW file photo)
The Sitka School District is considering an early retirement incentive for teachers, as a way of helping make ends meet next year.
At its last meeting earlier this month (1-6-21), the Sitka School Board authorized the interim superintendent to open negotiations with the local teachers union.
Early retirement is a tool that has been used before by the Sitka School District, as well as by other communities in the state. Alaska’s educators belong to a pension program called “TRS” or the Teachers’ Retirement System which mirrors the state’s program for municipal and government employees called “PERS” the Public Employees Retirement System.
Posted by Robert Woolsey, KCAW | Dec 21, 2020
Sitka High ESL teacher Betty Richter’s technical writing class demonstrates social distancing technique. Although schools are an easy place to spread disease, the district says tough mitigation measures have resulted in no detectable spread of COVID-19 in schools. “The 10 or 11 times we’ve had a positive case at a building where people were in person,” said special education director Chris Voron, “we followed a mitigation plan and there’s been no documented transmission that public health can detect in our contact tracing.” (SHS photo)
Sitka’s schools are on holiday break, and whether they reopen for in-person learning on January 4 remains a question mark.