With fight over education renewed in state capital, lawmakers consider funding methods
Monday morning hearing follows governor detailing own omnibus education bill Friday
JUNEAU, Alaska (KTUU) - As state lawmakers gear up for a potentially lengthy battle over how to fund education across Alaska, the House Education Committee returned to discussions over House Bill 69 on Monday, with the ideological differences over a path forward making themselves evident even within the committee itself.
The legislation sponsored by Rep. Rebecca Himschoot, NA-Sitka, centers on per-student funding in Alaska, including the state’s Base Student Allocation system.
“House Bill 69 is responding to what I think is a clear crisis in education across the state,” Himschoot said. “We’ve had relatively flat funding over time, for about the last decade. We’ve had some soul-crushing inflation going on that I think we’ve all felt, and our schools in particular have felt that. We’re facing a national teacher shortage that we have to deal with.
“In the face of all that,” she said, “I think we need to adjust the base of our foundation formula.”
HB 69, which is co-sponsored by Reps. Maxine Dibert, D-Fairbanks, and Andy Josephson, D-Anchorage, include provisions that would increase the BSA annually into 2028.
That increase would equal the average increase of all items of the consumer price index for urban Alaska seen in the first three of the four preceding years. Additionally, $1,000 would be added the first year, dropping to $404 after that.
The BSA for this school year is $5,960.
Himschoot stated Monday that, in her eyes, the bill does not provide a funding increase so much as it restores funding.
“The purpose of the inflation-proofing is to take the risk that districts face right now,” she said, “and place that on the Legislature, so that districts have some predictability and stability in their funding.”
Marie Marx, a budget bill drafter for the Legislative Affairs Agency’s Legislative Legal Services division, emphasized that the BSA is not currently inflation-proofed.
“There is inflation-proofing in many statutes in Alaska law right now,” Marx said. “Inflation-proofing can be done many ways, and it’s a policy choice; simple inflation-proofing would be taking a base year, and then adjusting for changes — whether they’re up or down — measured from that base year.
“This is more of a cumulative inflation-proofing,” she said of HB 69. “We use different types in law, and that is a policy choice to be made by the committee.”
Within the House Education Committee, however, opinions on a path forward are certainly not entirely aligned from lawmaker to lawmaker.
“I’m struggling a little bit whenever we start talking about ‘inflation-proofing,’ and how we’re going to get predictable numbers,” Rep. Bill Elam, R-Nikiski, said. “How are we going to have predictable measures on how, as a state, we’re going to be able to afford what this needs to be?”
Himschoot responded by saying in part that districts are being challenged by those same conditions.
“Districts face that same question, with no ability to shift things in their budget,” she said. “When they’ve cut everything they can with 85, 80 to 85% of their budget being personnel, all they can do is cut teachers, which impacts our kids.
“I’m asking us to shift that burden from the school districts to the state, where we have a little bit more flexibility, including the ability to raise revenue — that districts don’t have.”
Rep. Rebecca Schwanke, R-Glennallen, said she understands the challenges school districts face but feels they also need to be sure to make appropriate changes and cuts, in their own ways, as is possible.
“I really need to see, from every school district, efforts made to try to rightsize,” she said. “If they have buildings they can’t support anymore because of lost enrollment, they need to consolidate amongst their own assets.
“I don’t like seeing school closures any more than anybody else; I’ve had five close in my district,” she continued, “and I know what that looks like, and it’s awful. But we need to do a better job of asking our school boards, who are — they have autonomy in how they spend their money, they have autonomy in what they do with their school buildings, a lot of it’s out of our control — we need to demand that they actually do the hard work necessary to get down to that place where they can weather until our state revenues start to increase again.”
HB 69 is also an entirely different proposal from what’s been seen from Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who has introduced a pair of bills to House and Senate lawmakers that also target education and education funding across Alaska, in the form of HB 76 and Senate Bill 82.
That legislation includes, but is not limited to:
- The removal of school district borders through open enrollment
- A ban on the use of mobile devices in public schools, outside of limited exceptions
- Grants to districts per student, based on student’s demonstration of grade level reading proficiency, or marked improvement year over year
- Additional funding for correspondence programs and career-technical education
- Teacher retention incentives
The Dunleavy administration on Friday spoke on some of those key education-related items being considered by state lawmakers this session.
“Education is one of the primary functions of a state government,” Dunleavy said. “It was viewed as so important when we were forming the country and the Constitution, that it was an item that the states were unwilling to give to the federal government.
“We’ve had some pretty good conversations the last couple of days with the Legislature, members of the Legislature, the leadership, et cetera,” he said. “Everybody wants to get a package done, and so we are working through some ways to try and facilitate that ... I’m hopeful we can get it done early so that the school districts, parents, teachers, and kids, everybody knows what we’re looking at.”
State of Alaska Department of Education and Early Development Commissioner Deena Bishop said during the same press conference that the omnibus education bill “demonstrates a forward-focused commitment to students and their learning,” also calling it a “bold, student-centered approach.”
“School funding discussions must not focus only on dollars spent, but on the return of the investments to our schools,” she said. “The coming years will be pivotal for our state by setting these high standards and empowering parents with educational options.
“Alaska’s public schools are more than institutions. They are strategic investments in the future of our state.”
While Dunleavy’s legislation doesn’t change the formula used to calculate overall school funding, incentives within the bill do inject money into the system, whether on a per-student basis or otherwise.
For example, school districts could receive $450 per kindergarten through sixth-grade student — depending on the student’s age — based on that student demonstrating grade-level proficiency for reading or an improvement in language arts skills based on statewide testing.
Millions of dollars in funding is listed for transportation, career and technical education, and residential schools; and there are teacher incentives ranging from $5,000 to $15,000 yearly — depending on district — for certificated, full-time teachers who meet certain requirements laid out in the bill.
Homeschool programs — which make up less than 17% of all student learning, according to the State of Alaska Department of Education and Early Development — and correspondence programs would also see significant boosts.
With the deficit already hovering around a $1.5 billion gap when it comes to the governor’s proposed budget, it’s unclear exactly how, or in what form, the education proposal might make it through the legislature.
For her part, Himschoot said Monday that she personally doesn’t want to see anything “ending” with homeschool programs or similar across the state.
“That’s not what I’m about,” she said, “but it can’t come at the cost of the neighborhood schools. We need to lift all the ships, and this bill [HB 69] will provide funding to correspond to schools, to charter schools, to neighborhood schools.”
Dunleavy on Friday also shared additional details of legislation focused on state-tribal compacting.
The proposal, via HB 59 and SB 66, would establish a pilot program for state-tribal education compact schools and allow tribes and related organizations to run public schools under compacts with DEED.
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