In 24 years of being a classroom teacher, nine of those in Alaska, I’ve never felt so overworked and undervalued as I do today. Since I started teaching in this state, I’ve seen disinvestment after disinvestment in education, leading to increased class sizes, decreased planning time, and increased workload for everyone involved in educating our youth. Educators here see no hope for state investment to help salaries keep up with inflation and no hope for a dignified retirement system, so they are leaving and telling their colleagues nationwide how little Alaska respects education.
I thank our legislators for the hard work that they put into SB140, which provides the first meaningful increase in the Base Student Allocation in seven years, though it doesn’t fully make up for the inflation loss over that time. However, our “education governor” has vetoed the funding. In doing so, he willfully disregards the expertise of the vast majority of working educators, current legislators, national experts, and his own Teacher Retention and Recruitment Task Force. He justifies the move by claiming that he refuses to “kowtow” to NEA-Alaska, and doing so shows that providing for students, educators and Alaska’s families comes a distant second to his own ego.
Or does Dunleavy have another agenda? While he claims he “doesn’t go home at night and sharpen knives” for making cuts, he does seem to need to go home at night and consult what others would like him to do. I urge our governor to stop selling out Alaska families while he auditions for national office. And if he just can’t do that? I hope our legislators find the will to do what he can’t: put Alaskans first.
— Christian Allen Haich
Anchorage
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