Nome Public Schools pressed the Nome Common Council Monday for earlier budget guidance, saying uncertainty over the city’s annual contribution is delaying offers to non-tenured teachers and putting staffing for next school year at risk.
In an unusual move, the joint meeting between the council and school district was held at Old St. Joe’s rather than City Hall, as school leaders laid out their proposed budget and urged the city to help move the process forward.
Superintendent Jamie Burgess and School Board Vice-President Darlene Trigg said the district’s most urgent concern is getting contracts out to non-tenured teachers, who make up about half of the district’s certified teaching staff.
While the district is required by law to offer contracts to tenured teachers, Trigg said they have held back non-tenured offers because they don’t know how much the city plans to appropriate.
“Maybe this is a time to really have a conversation around our budget timelines,” Trigg said. “We have people that are literally going, ‘Do we have a job? What do we do? Do we leave? Do we look elsewhere?’ ”
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Burgess said the uncertainty is already affecting retention.
“We’ve got a whole bunch of staff that are just like 'we want to come back',” Burgess said. “We want to give them their contract.”
The district is requesting a $3.5 million city appropriation for the upcoming fiscal year, up from the $2.7 million appropriation it received last year. That appropriation was, notably, a 21% decrease from the previous fiscal year.
When pressed by councilmember Adam Lust over other areas to trim, Burgess said the proposed school budget is already lean, with the district’s own reserves falling and little room left for additional cuts.
School officials said a minimum city contribution of $1.5 million, the amount required by statute, would leave the district in the red if all contracts were issued. The district’s contracted CFO, Genevieve Hollins told the council over Zoom that such a move would result in a negative fund balance of $980,000.
Burgess said that reality has left the district with few options because payroll dominates the budget.
“So much of our budget is people,” Burgess said. “It doesn’t leave us a whole lot of other places we can go back and cut.”
She said that if the city’s contribution lands closer to last year’s $2.7 million than the district’s $3.5 million request, the district would likely have to go back and cut positions.
Council members said they understood the urgency, but several noted the city has not yet seen its first draft budget and is also managing its own financial pressures. Councilmember Scot Henderson noted the city and school district are working on different timelines, making it difficult for the council to commit to a number this early.
City Manager Lee Smith told the group he did not expect to recommend a reduction below last year’s school contribution.
“I had no plans in recommending a cut of any sort. So to schools, I'm just throwing stuff out there, to at least plug in the $2.7 [million],” Smith said. “I don't see it going below that.”
Smith said the city is trying to move up its budget work and could have a “rough first draft” ready by March 20 or 21. He said that could give the school board something to work from before its March 24 special meeting, when teacher contracts could potentially be addressed.
The discussion also underscored a broader issue both sides said they want to resolve: the city and school district budget cycles do not align, and that mismatch is contributing to the current crunch.
Burgess said the district must make staffing decisions earlier than the city finalizes its budget because teacher hiring becomes much harder later in the spring and summer.
“Our hiring window is limited by the nature of the industry that we serve,” Burgess said.
Trigg said the district is looking for a clearer timeline in future years so similar problems do not keep repeating.
“My ask is that we try for the future years to just come to some consensus about when are we going to know what the dollar amount from the city is,” Trigg said. “We just need a timeline.”
By the end of the meeting, council members and school officials appeared to agree on at least one point: the process needs to improve. In the short term, school leaders said they’re looking for enough direction from the city to reassure teachers and keep as many of them in Nome as possible.
