JUNEAU — Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy introduced an education package on Friday that’s expected to launch a contentious debate on education policy during this year’s legislative session.
Leaders in both the House and Senate began the session with a promise to advance legislation that would increase education funding without tying it to any policy changes. The push comes as schools across the state report a crisis in the ability to pay for everything from teacher salaries to building maintenance and heating.
“You’ve got to stabilize the ship and save the people who are drowning before you can talk to them about how you might trim the sails or even rearrange the deck chairs,” Sen. Löki Tobin, chair of the Senate Education Committee, said after Dunleavy’s legislation was unveiled.
The proposal from Dunleavy — a former public school teacher and administrator — instead offers more limited funding tied to specific policies he has long sought, including ones to overhaul the way charter schools are approved in the state and increase the public funding for homeschooling programs.
A bill backed by the House majority would increase education funding by more than $460 million annually and tie future funding increases to inflation. The state’s current education budget is about $1.2 billion. The funding formula for schools hasn’t seen significant change since 2017.
“You can’t continue to starve the schools and then point at them and say, ‘Look, they failed,’” said Rep. Rebecca Himschoot, co-chair of the House Education Committee.
Dunleavy’s bill includes targeted funding increases that don’t change the underlying Base Student Allocation. It would cost around $117 million annually, including a $43 million increase for homeschooled students; $31 million for career and technical education; $14.5 million for student transportation, $22 million for reading instruction in elementary schools; and $4 million for residential schools.
The legislation would also allow children to enroll in whatever school they choose, regardless of where they live, as long as the school is not at capacity. It would also provide transportation adjustments so kids can travel to their chosen school.
The bill calls for spending $58 million annually for a three-year program that would offer teachers annual bonuses of between $5,000 and $15,000 depending on whether the district is rural or urban.
The bill would also order districts to ban the use of cellphones in schools.
During an hour-long live-streamed presentation, Dunleavy depicted the legislative debate that would take place in the coming weeks as a battle between his administration and the Alaska chapter of the National Education Association, a union representing most public school teachers in the state, which has been largely opposed to Dunleavy’s education policies.
“I’m not going to back down,” Dunleavy said on his commitment to adopting policy reforms to go along with a funding increase.
NEA-Alaska President Tom Klaameyer said the union “will always advocate for all our Alaska students to have the best public education system possible.”
“And I’m not going to apologize for that,” Klaameyer said.
House Speaker Bryce Edgmon called Dunleavy’s statements on Friday “passionate and aggressive.”
“We’re going to do our best to work with him to find common ground,” said Edgmon.
Teacher bonuses
The state had 598 vacant teacher positions on the first day of the current school year, according to data presented Friday by Education Commissioner Deena Bishop. That’s the highest number ever recorded, and a 230% increase from the number of vacancies recorded in the fall of 2020.
[Earlier coverage: Alaska education advocates gloomy about prospects of a big funding boost this year]
Dunleavy says the bonuses — which were first introduced last session — can help attract teachers to Alaska.
Lawmakers have questioned the impact of short-term bonuses, which could temporarily boost recruitment but do nothing to address the state’s long-term retention rate.
Klaameyer said the union representing Alaska teachers does not oppose the bonuses, but its members “think there are better ways” to attract teachers, namely providing districts with funding that would allow them to raise pay for teachers and other needed positions in schools on a permanent basis.
Lawmakers approved last year a bill that would give nationally certified teachers bonuses in an effort to retain Alaska’s experienced educators. Dunleavy did not include funding for the measure in this year’s budget, and Bishop said Friday that regulations to implement the bonuses had not been developed by her department.
Charter schools
Charter schools in Alaska currently serve 4% of public school students. Lawmakers in the House and Senate majorities have questioned the idea of offering funding and policy boosts that serve only a minority of students in the state.
Dunleavy reintroduced and expanded his proposal to expand the ways that new charter schools can form in Alaska. Under existing law, charter schools must be first be approved by the locally elected school board where the school is located.
Dunleavy’s proposal would allow a governor-appointed state board of education to approve new charter schools. The university and local municipalities could also launch new charter schools.
Dunleavy said his plan to increase the number of charter schools was in response to a recent study showing that students in Alaska’s existing charter schools perform well. The methodology and results of the study have been questioned by Alaska lawmakers and researchers.
“If Alaska’s charter schools are as high-performing as we hope they are — as they seem to be — then why would we change the system that gave us those schools?” said Himschoot.
Senate President Gary Stevens, a Kodiak Republican, said earlier this week that Dunleavy’s proposals on expanding charter schools are “a non-starter for many of us who believe in public education and don’t want to see those changes made.”
Stevens reiterated that message on Friday.
“Removing an elected school board’s local control and giving it to an unelected state board to establish charter schools is a no-go. This level of local control and parental involvement is what makes our charter schools thrive,” he said in a written statement.
Correspondence programs
Students enrolled in publicly funded homeschooling programs make up roughly 17% of Alaska public school students.
Roughly 40% of the permanent funding increase proposed by the governor would go to publicly funded homeschooled programs. The vast majority of students in those programs do not participate in statewide testing, meaning the state has a limited ability to track whether those funds would improve outcomes for the roughly 20,000 students who participate in those programs.
A recent review by legislative analysts found that graduation rates from publicly-funded homeschooling programs are significantly lower when compared to graduation rates from traditional public schools in the state.
“I’m curious why there are some who are winning in this legislation and getting more resources when their outcomes are abysmal,” said Tobin. “It’s a cognitive dissonance that one group will benefit from money and the other group won’t.”
Raising scores
Dunleavy said Friday that recently-released scores from the 2024 Nation’s Report Card assessment, which showed Alaska’s students are at the bottom of the nation, indicates policy changes are needed. The assessment indicates that Alaska’s average scores have gone down in both math and reading when compared to 2022. More than half of Alaska’s fourth grade students scored “below basic” in reading.
Public educators and Dunleavy have different interpretations of what is needed to address Alaska’s poor outcomes. Many educators say that improvements aren’t achievable without additional funding that can be used to attract and keep quality teachers. Dunleavy says that the state must overhaul its policies for the funds to have their desired effect.
“If we only did reforms, that wouldn’t be the right thing to do. If we only did the funding that wouldn’t be the right thing to do. We need to do both,” said Palmer Republican Shelley Hughes, who serves in the Senate minority.
She added that “this is a golden opportunity” to enact reforms that help improve academic outcomes.
But the state has already overhauled its policies. In 2022, lawmakers approved a massive reading bill modeled after successful legislation in Mississippi. The policy overhaul, which passed with a bipartisan vote, is targeted at improving reading abilities among Alaska students by third grade.
But lawmakers and some teachers have been saying since 2022 that parts of the bill will be difficult or impossible to implement without increased funding to go with it.
Dunleavy proposed targeted funding that would send nearly $22 million to elementary schools to help implement the reading bill. That is far below the funding amount that House and Senate leaders say is needed.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that the total annual cost of Dunleavy’s bill would be $105 million. The story has been updated to reflect that the total cost is expected to be $117 million.
Sean Maguire reported from Juneau and Iris Samuels reported from Anchorage.