The judge who struck down key parts of Alaska’s home-school laws has agreed to hold the ruling until June 30 to allow students to finish out the school year, rejecting Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s request to pause the ruling indefinitely.
Anchorage Superior Court Judge Adolf Zeman, who Dunleavy appointed, ruled last month that laws allowing public education dollars to go to private and religious schools violated the Alaska Constitution. The ruling sent families and lawmakers scrambling for a solution—exposing deep divisions on public education policy—but Judge Zeman’s latest decision to pause the order will at least provide clarity for the remaining school year.
“This court finds that a limited stay is the best solution to ensure that students, families and school districts are protected from undue disruption and all parties are protected from unnecessary uncertainty and unrelated harms,” Judge Zeman wrote in his order. “A limited state until the end of the fiscal year will ensure any correspondence allotments that were taken in reliance on (the unconstitutional laws) will be honored while minimizing the potential for continued unfettered unconstitutional spending.”
The stay through June 30 was requested by the plaintiffs in the case, a group of families at traditional neighborhood schools who challenged the growing practice of private school families using the home-school allotments to cover tuition and other extracurriculars. It’s not clear how widespread the practice has become, but several religious private schools have made it a practice to enroll students in home-school programs to cover tuition costs.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who authored the now-invalidated laws as a state senator in 2014, has defended the spending and requested an indefinite stay until the case is fully resolved. That would likely take years, given that the governor has indicated his intention to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. It has not yet reached the Alaska Supreme Court.
Part of the governor’s claim, which he reiterated on Wednesday, is that the ruling is so broad and impossibly complicated that it could upend the entire public education system. He and his legal team have argued that the ruling could prohibit any public school spending on any private vendor, effectively barring schools from purchasing textbooks, contracting with private bussing companies or buying cleaning supplies.
“This is literally a disaster, and potentially an emergency because of its magnitude,” Dunleavy said at an informal news conference on Wednesday, where he threatened to veto any legislative fixes produced by the Legislature until the legal appeals run their course.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs and the Alaska Legislature disagree, arguing that the ruling was narrow in scope and could be resolved through relatively simple fixes to ensure that unconstitutional spending on private and religious schools doesn’t continue.
And now we can count Judge Zeman among that group.
In his order, Judge Zeman wrote that the state “mischaracterizes and misreads” his order.
“Once again, the state mischaracterizes this court’s previous order. The only statutes at issue in this case concern the correspondence allotment program; as a result, this court’s order finding those statutes unconstitutional only affects those statutes,” he wrote. “To reiterate, it is not the court’s role to draft legislation or determine policy for the state through impermissibly revising otherwise unconstitutional statutes.”
The next steps aren’t entirely clear.
The House and Senate are advancing legislative fixes that are at opposite ends of the spectrum regarding oversight for home-school programs.
The Republican-led House proposal would authorize the Board of Education to set spending rules, with the only guideline being that they abide by the Alaska Constitution. The Senate, meanwhile, has moved legislation that would enshrine much of what the home-school program was before the 2014 changes to the law, setting stricter limits on how home-school funding can be spent that would bar spending on things like family travel, home improvements and entertainment.
Both proposals face an uphill battle with Gov. Dunleavy’s veto threat.
Some legislators have been skeptical of fully handing it over to the Board of Education, which is wholly appointed by Gov. Dunleavy and currently includes members who have been outspoken advocates for spending public money on private and religious education such as Bob Griffin. Griffin’s set to be up for confirmation next week.
The session is set to end on May 15.
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.