Balances 2015 budget by draining $1.3 billion education fund

The budget approved by the Alaska Legislature Monday would drain a $1.3 billion account set aside to provide school districts some measure of financial stability, Alaska Dispatch News writes.

The plan would end the “forward funding” of kindergarten-though-12th grade public education in Alaska, a system under which lawmakers had set aside money more than a year before it would be needed.

But the overall budget bill, passed by both the House and Senate Monday on the way to adjournment more than a week late, does not resolve a $3.2 billion financial impasse for the 2016 fiscal year that starts in July.