This morning, the Alaska Senate approved the compromise deal on education passed by the House last week, sending the bill to a governor who has already criticized the legislation.
The deal includes a permanent increase to baseline education funding, additional funding for K-3 students who need help reading through the Alaska Reads Act, increased funding for home school students and the creation of a statewide charter school coordinator position. It was hailed as a landmark achievement, settling one of the most contentious issues well before the halfway mark of the legislative session.
But it doesn’t appear that the governor will let it be that easy.
In a statement posted to Twitter/X following the Senate’s vote, the governor decried the legislation as a continuation of the strategy “just spend more money” on schools.
“My initial review of the education bill is that it falls far short of improving outcomes for students. It appears to do the same thing we have done for decades — just spend more money,” said the governor, who last year saw his salary increased by 20% after replacing the entirety of the state’s compensation board. “It doesn’t support the Reads Act, it fails to improve access to public charter schools and it does nothing to recruit and retain teachers. We can’t do the same thing over and over again and expect different results.”
To many, it came across as a thinly veiled promise that he would block the legislation from becoming law, either by a veto of the bill or a veto of its funding during the budget process. Legislators are already bracing for that possibility, with some expecting the veto as early as today.
Overriding a veto of the education bill has a lower bar than overriding budget vetoes, requiring 40 of the Legislature’s 60 members to vote in favor of an override rather than 45 votes for a budget veto override.
Clearing either hurdle would be easy if all legislators who voted for passage of the legislation – 38 in the House and 18 in the Senate – voted to override, but that is far from a given.
Legislators fell well short of overriding the governor’s veto of one-time education dollars earlier this year, with many Republicans voting in favor of upholding the veto after voting in favor of the funding last year.
Today, at least one conservative legislator who voted in favor of the bill seemed to welcome the possibility of the governor vetoing the legislation.
“If he decides to play hardball, I’ll be on his team,” said Sen. Shelley Hughes, R-Palmer, during the Senate debate on the bill before voting in favor of the measure.
While the deal was hailed across the political spectrum, it appears the governor is fuming over a lack of his personal priorities in the legislation. Not included in the deal is any money for the teacher bonus program that the governor has insisted is the panacea for the state’s education woes.
The governor’s pitch in place of an increase to baseline education funding is a program that would pay teachers between $5,000 and $15,000 for completing a year of teaching, depending on where they’re working. The program would have lasted just three years — with benefits only being guaranteed in the first year — and was pitched as a way to study whether paying teachers more actually matters.
In the single hearing that the House Rules Committee held on the bill this year, several teachers testified that they didn’t want a bonus, especially when other people in the school system, such as aides, tutors and counselors would be left out. They said they wanted more stable and predictable funding and that the bonuses wouldn’t solve the ongoing problem of pink slips.
House Republican Rep. Mike Cronk attempted to include the provision via an amendment to the education bill last week. As a former teacher, he said the program would be an effective way of finding out whether paying teachers more is a good policy.
“This is an opportunity for us to say, hey, we value our teachers. We want them to stay,” Cronk said. “It could work.”
The amendment failed on a 20-20 vote.
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.
