School board ends free breakfasts for all students, worries about losing state and federal funds for other programs

Freeze of grants by Trump administration, state-level cuts backed by Gov. Dunleavy make Juneau leaders wary despite BSA hike

Thunder Mountain Middle School, where the Juneau School District’s administrative offices are located, on Friday, June 27, 2025. (Mark Sabbatini / Juneau Independent)

A free universal student breakfast program is ending due to lack of funds and Juneau School District leaders are resigning themselves to the loss of funding for other programs that have been frozen by the federal government or cut by the state.

The Juneau Board of Education on Tuesday approved paying off food service and transportation debts, along with hiring a few staff, using most of the roughly $1 million in funds added to the $79 million in operating revenue the board based its current year’s budget on. But most of the items on a proposed 14-item "add-back" list totaling $3.1 million — including $230,000 to continue the breakfast program — were rejected.

"It doesn't percolate to the top for a couple of reasons," Elizabeth Siddon, the board’s vice president and an advocate of the program in recent meetings, said in an interview Friday. "One is families who qualify for the free and reduced lunch program will then still have free breakfast. So it isn't that nobody will have free breakfast."

Also, Siddon said, the universal breakfast program was funded by the federal government when it started during the COVID-19 pandemic and district officials previously considered the program worth continuing when the federal funding lapsed. But she said the availability of the free meals has kept eligible families from applying for free and reduced student meals — which means the district isn’t getting properly reimbursed by the federal government for the free meals being provided.

The breakfast program, much debated at board meetings earlier this year, barely got a mention at Tuesday’s meeting as district leaders worried about much broader budget issues.

The school board passed a budget for the fiscal year that began July 1 that assumes a $400 increase in the $5,960 Base Student Allocation, with Gov. Mike Dunleavy subsequently signing a budget with a $500 hike. He vetoed an additional $200 approved by the Legislature, thus leaving districts with less than last year’s one-time $680 increase.

The Legislature could restore the additional $200 in per-student funding with an override vote, but Dunleavy has called a special session starting Aug. 2 that is deliberately attempting to prevent that action since is telling Republicans members to stay away from the session during the first five days of the session when an override vote could occur.

As a result, Juneau School District leaders say they aren’t counting on those funds being restored — and thus most of the add-back list was bypassed. Among the few additions approved were an administrator to register a growing number of homeschool students, a person to handle federal grant applications and a librarian for the Dzantik'i Heeni campus that board members previously had voted in favor of.

"These are hard conversations and frustrating conversations, and there's a lot of like theoretical crises happening all around us," Siddon said during Tuesday’s meeting. "But when I think about those students at that Dzantik'i Heeni campus walking to school Aug. 15 they deserve a library in the same way that they deserve a playground. We have several hundred students there and right now a not-functioning library. We already had this conversation in January and agreed as a board that it was a priority to have that be a functioning library, so this is just adding it back because it was forgotten in the budget."

A further setback for the board occurred June 30 when the Trump administration unexpectedly froze nearly $5 billion in federal education funds, including three grants for Juneau’s schools totaling $419,694.

The freeze affected grants for professional development, English learners and student academic achievement, said Nicole Herbert, the district’s chief financial officer, during Tuesday’s meeting. She said the grants fund four staff positions and "we have not gotten confirmation from the state of Alaska whether or not any unspent funds in 2025 are going to still be able to roll over to help bridge a gap."

Longtime school board member Emil Mackey, noting the U.S. Supreme Court this week ruled the Trump administration can do a mass firing of federal employees that had been subjected to numerous legal challenges, said local officials should assume the current frozen funds and possibly others no longer exist.

"What I'm going to point out is whether it's the firing of the federal employees, whether it is without due process, whether it is the arbitrary withholding of grant funds, whether it is temporary or permanent, the Supreme Court of the United States has basically unleashed an administration that can basically do whatever it wants to by fiat, by executive order, no matter what the law says," Mackey said. "This is a very dangerous time for our country. But I'm on the school board and what I see through the very rapidly changing federalist system in which we operate is that we cannot rely on any federal funding as of today. That tomorrow the rules can change and the Supreme Court will let it happen. And we also have a governor that does not support public education and will not come to our aid."

Superintendent Frank Hauser said a complication to consider is if a program funded in the current year’s budget is cut due to the sudden unavailability of funds, what the difficulty will be in restoring the program if the funds are again available some months from now.

But Deedie Sorensen, the board’s president, said she agrees with Mackey that the assumption should be the funds are gone.

"I don't think that we can wait until February to decide that maybe Christmas isn't coming, maybe these grant monies aren’t going to come," she said. "I mean, I don't hold out any hope that the Congress will lean on the executive branch to push forward the money that the Congress has appropriated. So I'm just thinking we need to be thinking like this isn't there anymore and perhaps we really need to scale back what we think we can adjust forward in our budget."

Another concern is the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development is looking to change the rules for how much municipalities can contribute to their school districts. Hauser said at a board meeting last month Juneau’s schools could lose up to $8 million with the change that the state board of education will consider Oct. 8.

All those budget concerns did end up spurring a further discussion about student meals, since Mackey noted the district has incurred deficits annually in its food service program for many years. He said it’s commendable the district has made an effort to improve nutrition in school meal programs over the years, but suggested food service contracts for the district need to "at least attempt in a better way to balance the budget through food costs."

"If you're a kid that doesn't get three meals a day, I'm not sure stressing fresh vegetables over them not being able to afford or obtain a meal at all is a better choice," he said.

"Do I like the fact that we might be serving Oreos instead of bacon and eggs? Nope, but is it what we may have to do under the current circumstances to make sure that we're actually feeding kids that need the meals?…The kids that rely on us for their nutrition, it may not be the best nutrition we really would like to deliver, but it's better than nothing."

• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.