Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of a permanent increase to baseline public school funding stood on Tuesday after legislators – divided over the budget and education policy – failed to muster the 40 votes needed to override him.
The vote to override his veto and enact a $1,000 increase to the state’s per-student funding formula, known as the Base Student Allocation, failed 33-27, leaving the path forward for public school funding uncertain as lawmakers enter the final stretch of the session.
Supporters of the funding argued it’s a critical lifeline for districts struggling with inflation, which has eaten into the buying power of the baseline funding that remained unchanged for nearly a decade. They’ve warned of accelerating school closures, larger class sizes and fewer electives, all things that they say will make it harder for teachers to teach students.
“Our schools are unable to meet their mission effectively because they don’t have the budget to deliver on the requirements we expect of them,” said Nikiski Republican Sen. Jesse Bjorkman, a former teacher, in support of the override. “Do our schools, do our teachers, do our support staff have the money to get the job done?”
Bjorkman noted that while the entire bill may have a roughly $250 million price tag, it only represents about a $77 million increase above the current funding levels.
For the most part, Dunleavy-aligned Republicans – who have insisted that funding be paired with law changes that would direct more funding toward homeschool programs and top-performing schools – didn’t weigh in on the debate at all. The only Dunleavy-aligned Republican to speak in favor of the veto was North Pole Rep. Mike Prax, who suggested that people who want to spend more on public schools should simply write a check to the state.
Instead, the opposition was largely left to Senate Finance Committee co-chairs Sens. Lyman Hoffman, D-Bethel, and Bert Stedman, R-Sitka. While they have been core members of the Senate’s moderate coalition majority, they broke from the majority to argue that the state simply cannot afford to adequately fund school districts at this time.
“We cannot balance the budget, and I think some of the rhetoric we’ve had for the last two months has been numbing people’s minds to how big the problem is,” Stedman said, noting that the governor had introduced a budget with a deficit north of a billion dollars. “It’s not a matter of what we want to do, it’s what we have to do.”
The state of Alaska has received nothing but bad news since legislators began the session in January. Trump has kicked off a trade war that has seen the state’s two main sources of revenue – oil production and investment income – collapse, making an already rocky financial picture that much more bleak. Stedman warned that things are set to look much worse next year than this year’s already dismal picture, arguing that it’s unlikely that the Legislature would actually be able to continue to fund the $1,000 figure into the future.
Steadman argued that, instead, the Legislature should aim to maintain school funding as well as the one-time funding they approved in last year’s budget, which followed Dunleavy’s last veto of public school funding. That would amount to about $680 in the BSA.
But even that figure is far from certain.
Following his veto, Dunleavy introduced a bill that would call for a $560 increase to the BSA. It also proposes additional funding for homeschool students and top-performing schools, which would bring the total amount of funding to a slight increase over the current year. However, because of the earmarked funds, most students would see their funding cut under his proposal.
Bjorkman was also critical of the governor’s proposal during the floor debate, arguing that it didn’t actually bring the kind of accountability its backers claim is so important. He pointed out that many of the people calling most loudly for accountability measures for brick-and-mortar schools have resisted testing when it’s applied to them.
“Someone might make kids take a test, heaven forbid,” he said. “Everybody loves, loves, loves accountability, right up until the time that it’s pretty important for their own kid to be accountable. Sometimes, that closely heartfelt desire for kids to be accountable goes out the window … At what point in time do we value education enough in this state to get the results that we expect?”
He said he’s worried that much of the lax oversight of the public school system, driven largely by the governor’s favoritism of homeschool programs, has encouraged students and families to take the path of least resistance in education. A run of recent lawsuits has challenged programs for allowing students enrolled in private and religious schools to use state funding to pay for tuition or extracurriculars, such as horseback riding lessons.
The floor debate also renewed calls for the state to work on balancing its budget through additional revenue streams. The Senate has proposed several changes to the corporate tax laws, which are estimated to bring in several hundred million dollars if implemented, enough to pay for the increase to education. However, given Gov. Dunleavy’s steadfast refusal to entertain any revenue measures, it’s unlikely that those would pass during his final two years in office.
The gridlock paints a gloomy picture ahead for the state, with many noting that the need for schools across the state was actually far greater than the $1,000 BSA increase outlined in the legislation. That’s particularly true for schools in rural communities, where the need has far outpaced the $1,000 BSA.
“This bill is expensive, and it still isn’t enough,” said Rep. Nellie Jimmie, D-Toksook Bay, during the floor debate, noting that students in her district told her they just wanted someone to stick around. “It’s time to clearly say we need to raise new revenues. And we shouldn’t be scared of that, especially when we’re thinking of the future of our children and our children’s children.”
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 Bluesky.
