There’s been a lot of talk and debate about how an obviously unconstitutional measure that allowed religious private schools to siphon public school funding slipped past legislators, past two administrations and sat on the books for a decade before finally being stuck down last week. That law was authored by Sen. Mike Dunleavy and pitched as a piece of a broader plan to amend the Alaska Constitution to remove the explicit ban on public school funding from going to private and religious schools to institute a voucher program.
The constitutional amendment never passed, largely because the future governor refused to provide clear details on how the school voucher program he wanted would actually function. Yet, this lack of transparency didn’t stop him from pushing forward with the law.
While Dunleavy had pitched it as a sensible way to give parents the choice of paying for a class here or there — he frequently used a Latin class at Monroe Catholic in Fairbanks as an example — it seemingly took a hard-right turn once Dunleavy became governor. Instead of a class here or there, parents began using the full home school allotments — up to $4,500 — to simply subsidize tuition at religious private schools.
It might have taken nearly a decade, but Dunleavy and his allies were able to essentially set up a “shadow school voucher program,” as attorney Scott Kendall put it.
It should serve as a stark warning as Gov. Mike Dunleavy now makes a determined push to seize control of the public charter school system with a law that would empower the Board of Education, entirely appointed by him and filled with right-wing allies, to greenlight new charter programs against the wishes of local school districts.
Then, like now, the governor has been similarly tight-lipped about how the new process works or what he plans to do with a law that he deemed so necessary that he vetoed a broadly popular education bill last month. His administration has been unable to answer even the most basic of questions about the status of charter schools in Alaska, failing to provide basic information like the size of waiting lists or the number of rejected charter applications in the state. When pressed, they’ve offered wildly inflated and easily debunked numbers. Anchorage doesn’t have 2,000 students on waiting lists. It has 388.
Instead, Dunleavy and his allies have frequently cited a surface-level study by a school voucher advocate as if that’s all that Alaska needs to make a potentially tectonic shift in public school education policy. They’ve attempted to mask their plans under the name of parental choice and involvement, seemingly ignoring the fact that much of the success of public charter schools is thanks to the current system of local control. Never mind the fact that charter classes are smaller and filled with students who generally come from wealthier families.
The governor’s failure to meaningfully engage in the debate over charter schools or offer justification that goes beyond browbeating mirrors much of the debate back over the home school allotments. While the governor has insisted the charter school changes aren’t an attempt to make an end run on the Alaska Constitution, his actions have said otherwise.
The use of his 2014 home-school law has become so brazen that some public home school programs, religious private schools and even the spouse of Attorney General Treg Taylor have written out explicit instructions on how to take advantage of the system. Dunleavy’s Department of Law even gave it a stamp of approval with a laughably bad legal opinion that said it was fine as long as it didn’t pay for most of the tuition (in many cases, it was).
Alaska Association of School Boards Executive Director Lon Garrison put a fine point on the concern in a letter late last month, writing that Dunleavy’s charter school changes are “the first and most significant step in a plan to reduce the power of local authorities and provide opportunities for private and religious schools to access public funds.”
While Garrison cut to the quick on the Dunleavy administration’s long-term goals, he was wrong about one thing: It wasn’t the first step.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.