The state allocates funding according to the cost of living in various communities. Anchorage has the most pupils, but it has just about the lowest per pupil funding from the state. The district budgets are public documents, and any citizen can get access to them. I don't know how transparent they are nowadays, but 20 years ago they were very hard to decipher. The district did everything it could to hide money, especially when they were bargaining with AEA. One year they budgeted for almost 100 more teachers than they actually hired. When AEA found out about it...and made that fact very public...the district was very embarrassed. 

ASD...and other districts... spends an outsize portion of its budget on administration. Districts do this despite all the research that fails to show administrators have a statistically significant impact on student learning. In fact, there are only two variables that consistently show such an impact...quality parenting and quality teaching.