OPINION: Alaska needs to reinvest in education

The commentary in the ADN on Dec. 18 penned by Gov. Mike Dunleavy contained a few curious partial truths about his recent budget proposal. In fairness, there are some new and positive investments made in this budget, and Gov. Dunleavy is signaling his support for families, while also being careful to say that this budget proposal is a “starting point,” which is a welcome collaborative tone after the last four years of chaos and obfuscation.

However, the one point made by the governor that can not go unchallenged is this: “The budget also fully funds education, including continued implementation of the Alaska Reads Act, pre-K, and an increase to the Base Student Allocation.”

In actuality, the governor’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2024 includes no increases to spending on K-12 education beyond that which was authorized by the Alaska Reads Act legislation passed in 2022. That bill, for example, provided a one-time $30 Base Student Allocation (BSA) increase and is not a new increase to the BSA introduced in the governor’s budget.

Nor does the governor’s budget fully fund education. In actuality, our public schools have lost ground each year since 2017. Since 2011, the Legislature and governor have chosen to flat-fund education instead of providing annual “raises” to keep up with inflation. To put this in perspective, if action had been taken by the Legislature to ensure annual increases to the BSA to keep up with the rate of inflation, the BSA would have been increased by about $1,300 per student over the last decade instead of only $250. A budget that fully funds education would make funding investments on a scale five times bigger than what the state has made, and is the scale of investment being actively sought by the majority of school districts, education associations and many legislators.

It is disingenuous for the governor to claim to fully fund education when a decade of flat funding continues to hamstring school districts that have absorbed the effective cuts by eliminating teacher and support positions, increasing class sizes, closing schools, eliminating cafeterias and meal programs and simply exhausting teachers to the point that thousands have quit the profession or left the state. These issues have also been compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact upon our schools and students over the past three years.

We need look no further than the Anchorage School District and its $48 million budget deficit to see the ramifications of years of flat funding. Although ASD is now proposing to close only one instead of six schools, those closures will likely be back on the table next year if education funding is not given a significant boost during the upcoming legislative session. As several other Alaskans have pointed out over the past several weeks in columns in the ADN, the state can’t continue to ask every school district to simply “do more with less” all the while demanding “better results,” This is flawed thinking and is as logical as expecting your car to run better by not doing routine maintenance or putting fuel in the gas tank.

The University of Alaska budget has also been cut by 20% since this governor took office. Painful and drastic cuts have been made to our educational institutions and those institutions continue to be left trying to manage programs and operations while understaffed and unable to provide any cost of living pay increases to the staff that remain.

The lack of adequate funding for public education is not a scenario that will provide long-term economic growth, stability or investment in Alaska.

After the recent ASD town hall sessions in Anchorage, what we do know is that our public schools are the heart of our communities. They educate our children, provide them with stable and safe environments, and support the broader community in countless ways. It is more imperative than ever that we put our children at the very center of our policies and decision making, especially when it comes to public education. Our children are not pawns or widgets; they are our future and they deserve every ounce of support and opportunity that we can provide for them.

We must provide a solid public education for our kids so that we have future citizens that are committed to their communities and who become a solid future workforce. Investing in our children will keep Alaska strong. Investing in our children’s education is the best return on investment that we can make.

In the coming weeks, I urge you to add your voice to the growing collective advocating to build back our public education system for our collective benefit. Add your voice by contacting Great Alaska Schools on Facebook or emailing greatakschoolsanc@gmail.com, and by asking your legislators and the governor to reinvest in our kids, our public schools and our future.

Caroline Storm is a former legislative candidate, an Anchorage parent and a member of Great Alaska Schools.

The views expressed here are the writer’s and are not necessarily endorsed by the Anchorage Daily News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)adn.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Read our full guidelines for letters and commentaries here.