OPINION: Dunleavy’s rhetoric doesn’t match his record on school funding

Will the real Mike Dunleavy please stand up? On March 31, Gov. Dunleavy wrote an opinion piece that was quite interesting. Sadly, it did not correspond to his recent actions, so it left me puzzled. He said he supports a BSA increase, yet he vetoed half of the one-time appropriation out of last year’s budget and this year he vetoed the BSA increase that was overwhelmingly passed by the House and Senate. That has thrown the entire budget process into a tizzy, and now we have no funding clarity for education. School districts are preparing to lay off hundreds of staff, because they have to use the best budget information available and it does not meet the needs of the schools by a huge margin.

At the same time, Gov. Dunleavy says he wants to reduce turnover of teachers and attract new teachers to Alaska. His actions recently — vetoing SB 140 — have done just the opposite. Between the conservative House majority’s actions at his behest (failure to override his veto), underpaying teachers across the board, having no defined-benefit retirement for teachers, and annually laying off hundreds of teachers because of the governor’s and majority’s inability to fund education or even pass a budget until the last second or later, it creates an untenable situation for teachers. Who in their right mind would agree to continue to work under those conditions or agree to go to work under those conditions?

He says there is a growing demand for public school choice. It is not clear what he is basing that claim on. Adjacent to Gov. Dunleavy’s commentary, Kelly Lessens had a fact-based commentary that used current data. She was interested in how many students were on waitlists for the lottery process to gain access to schools and programs outside of their neighborhoods or special programs inside their neighborhood. She found that 1,280 had applied and, of those, 388 applications were for charter schools. To put that in perspective, of the 43,000 ASD students, 3% applied for the lottery overall and less than 1% applied for charter schools. The governor supports charter schools and has vetoed increases to the BSA, yet the language immersion programs that are on the chopping block due to lack of BSA funding currently have 851 applications, more than twice the demand of the charter schools. It seems that the special interests he talks about may be the charter school lobbyists based on the data.

He also said that the school districts aren’t transparent with their budgets. Really? I searched on Anchorage School District Budget and found a 481-page document that breaks the budget down in great detail. Perhaps one of his staff should try that.

The governor says that our education system needs reform, yet never explains what the problem is with the system or what “reform” actually means or what it looks like. Student outcomes for our state are low relative to other states and this seems to be one of the reasons for “reform.” However, before solving a problem, it is always a good idea to know what caused the problem in the first place.

The reason our students underperform relative to the rest of the nation is not because we don’t have enough charter schools or home-schooled students. The overall impact of those students’ test scores would not make any significant difference even if their numbers doubled because they represent such a small percentage of the student population. It is because the education budget has not kept pace with the costs of operating a world-class education system. This created the conditions for lower student performance.

For the past 10-15 years, the constant refrain from conservative majority caucuses in the Alaska Legislature has been “show us better results and we will show you better funding.” Flat funding becomes lower funding because of the effects of inflation. Lower funding means fewer teachers, larger classes, and ultimately lower student outcomes. The fixed costs of property, plant and equipment continue no matter how little you want to pay for them. Gas, electricity, insurance, maintenance, and all the other costs go up with inflation. The only place to cut is personnel when the budget shrinks — and that means teachers. Saying that “results need to improve before increasing the budget” makes as much sense as saying “the beatings will continue until morale improves.” Just as at Boeing, where the priority was lowering costs instead of safety and it resulted in multiple disasters, paying less for education than it requires instead of funding it to a level that will facilitate achieving the results you desire will assuredly fail.

Politicians like to say they are making the decisions that they do because of the “will of the people” or “what the people say.” Recently, there have been numerous examples of the expression of the “will of the people” that are credible. On April 4, there was a statewide walkout by students in support of an increase in the BSA. In the municipal election in Anchorage, the school bond passed, clearly demonstrating majority support for education. A recent survey by Sen. Matt Claman of his district showed education as the highest priority of the nearly 440 constituents responding — Sen. Claman’s District H is a relatively conservative district. The same survey showed that only 25% opposed new taxes to help balance the budget, that 82% oppose a statutory dividend, and 72% favor a pension retirement program for public employees. To those who say this is not a scientific survey, my response is that given the number of responses and the conservative nature of the district, it is very unlikely that these results will differ from a larger survey across a larger area. The overwhelming support for education, the pension for public employees, and using the Permanent Fund to pay for education and other essential government services makes it impossible that another survey would yield substantially different results.

It is abundantly clear that the governor’s — and House majority’s — current position does not represent the will of the majority of Alaskans when it comes to funding education. So, whose position do they represent? If they truly wish to do the “will of the people,” they will go back to SB 140, increase the BSA an additional $1,400 and fund a pension for all public employees.

Frank Jeffries is a retired professor emeritus of management who taught for 24 years at the College of Business and Public Policy at the University of Alaska Anchorage after spending 20 years in private industry in a variety of management positions.

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