The sweeping omnibus education bill devised by House Republicans and supported by Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy may be dead, but so too is an increase to baseline school funding. At least for now.
The House resumed work on Senate Bill 140 on Wednesday after House Republicans failed to muster enough votes to adopt the omnibus as the working version of the bill. That — along with the failure of another procedural motion — leaves the legislation as the one-paragraph bill sent over by the Senate to increase internet speeds for remote schools.
The legislation is still open to amendments, with a final vote expected on Friday.
Members of the bipartisan House Minority offered a series of amendments to increase the base student allocation — the figure used to determine school funding — that ranged from $680 to nearly $1,900, which is higher than what educators have requested. Legislators noted that even the $1,800 figure wouldn’t make every school district whole after years of flat funding and rampant inflation, which have eroded school districts’ buying power.
“An $1,890 BSA increase may sound like a lot, but … the budget for the Department of Corrections has increased by 40% over the past five years,” said Rep. Andrew Gray, D-Anchorage, while proposing the largest BSA increase of the night. “An equivalent 40% increase in school funding would require a $2,384 addition to the BSA. That’s what we’d have to do to treat our schools as well as we treat our prisons.”
Several legislators offered similar stories about the increasingly dire situation facing schools throughout the state. Many schools are going without dedicated nurses or counselors as class sizes are ballooning.
Sitka independent Rep. Rebecca Himschoot, a newly retired elementary school teacher, said the remaining school staff and teachers are stretched thin with the impossible task of juggling the needs of students in crisis with teaching. She said there once were enough counselors that they could help students whose parents were divorcing, but now they don’t even get heard as schools are dealing with kids in more immediate crisis.
Quoting education historian Diane Ravitch, she argued, “Our schools are not in crisis any more than our society is in crisis,” and that supporting schools is one way to help those kids and their families by offering them stability in an uncertain time.
For all the talk on Monday about their desire to support education funding when it appeared their omnibus bill was doomed — which extended to social media posts claiming they planned on supporting a $680 increase to the BSA — House Majority Republicans were entirely silent on school funding during Wednesday’s debates.
Not a single Majority Republican spoke to defend or explain their votes, which saw the House Majority’s 20 Republican members and caucus-less Wasilla Republican Rep. David Eastman reject every amendment on a 21N-19Y margin.
Education Committee co-chair Rep. Justin Ruffridge, the Soldotna Republican who originally devised the $680 BSA increase because it met the needs of Kenai schools, eventually did speak, but only to oppose a series of amendments offered by Anchorage Democratic Rep. Andy Josephson aimed at home schools. The measures that would have required them to participate in state testing — when home school opt-out rates are north of 80% — and report how allocations are being spent were unfair and inappropriate in a bill that doesn’t deal with home schools, Ruffridge said.
The measures also failed on a 21N-19Y margin.
The House eventually adjourned around 10:30 p.m., leaving the bill open to further amendments.
That means provisions from the omnibus, such as the expansion of charter schools, increased funding for home school students, the governor’s controversial teacher bonus program and even a BSA increase, could still be approved via amendment. While some of those changes could be accomplished with a 21-vote majority, such changes will likely require a title change for the bill, which means that 27 votes will ultimately be needed to sign off on any changes made to the bill.
The House is set to return today at 11 a.m.
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.