Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy has until Monday to decide whether he will allow the state to continue to fund schools at what’s essentially the status quo levels or if he will deliver yet another veto of public school funding.
A bipartisan coalition of legislators successfully voted to override his latest veto of a broadly popular education bill in the final days of the legislative session, marking the first time in more than 20 years that legislators overrode a sitting governor. However, whether that funding actually reaches school districts depends on the fate of the state’s budget.
Dunleavy can – and has frequently done so – reduce any item in the budget via the line-item veto, and he’s talked openly about vetoing funding from the state’s base student allocation. If he does, it’d be the first time that the state has funded schools below the amount laid out in state law, throwing schools yet another painful curveball as they head into the summer.
Legislators can override a budget veto with a 45-vote majority, but it’s uncertain if legislators will be able to muster those numbers when it would require several Dunleavy-aligned Republicans to buck the governor another time.
But in the big picture, if there’s any silver lining to it, it’s that Dunleavy’s disastrous legacy on public education is increasingly undeniable.
As the Republican enters his final year in office, the self-styled education governor – who, as he frequently mentions when pushing for school cuts, was once a teacher – has overseen years of declining test scores while districts’ buying power has fallen well behind inflation. His biggest policy priority is the redistribution of education dollars into programs that funnel money into private and religious programs, flouting the Alaska Constitution’s prohibition on such spending with a wink and a nod.
Legislators’ refusal to further entrench this tiered system of education has incensed the governor, who has blown up several hard-fought bipartisan efforts to increase school funding because it didn’t include his priorities. He has wasted much time and effort pushing for a slate of increasingly unpopular policies that fall under the banner of “school choice,” while other efforts, such as free school meals, civics education, and AAPI history, didn’t make it to the finish line this session (they still have a shot next year).
While he’s argued that increasing funding for homeschool programs and expanding charter programs are some of the best ways to improve educational outcomes in Alaska, advocates and even some of those involved in those programs argue that they simply can’t serve all children. They require extra involvement from a student’s family, whether it be teaching, transportation, meals and volunteer hours. And that’s not to mention the pending legal challenges against some programs allowing students to use their homeschool funds to pay for tuition at private and religious schools, a practice that Dunleavy openly supports.
“On no planet is this a sustainable model. This magnitude of commitment is not possible for many, many families,” wrote Sarah K. Lewis in an op-ed before the veto override. “Advocating for more charters is not a way forward; instead, it is the foremost example of the short-sighted leadership that has led Alaska down this devastating path. Public education is not supposed to be a caste system.”
In the big picture, it means that the best opportunities to learn in unique and smaller classrooms go to students for wealthier families or families with a parent without a job, essentially reinforcing the achievement gap between the rich and everyone else.
In an editorial coining the term the “Dunleavy Decline,” a group of Alaska policy-minded parents pointed out that Alaska’s slumping test scores align with Dunleavy’s push to ease oversight on how homeschool funding can be spent, which opened the doors for them to serve as tuition vouchers.
“While many families choose correspondence programs to homeschool their children — a valuable option for some — the lack of oversight has allowed public funds to serve as de facto vouchers for private and religious schools,” they wrote. “Though this practice is now under legal challenge, the data shown here reflects the decade it was permitted. Further, it is unclear what results we are getting for this investment, because only about 12% of correspondence students take standardized tests.”
They estimate some $580 million left the state’s neighborhood schools and were funneled to homeschool programs in the decade since the more lax rules came into effect. Since then, reading and math scores for 4th and 8th-grade students have declined at an increasing rate.
This is a lesson other states have been learning in recent years, too, with several pulling back lightly regulated homeschool and voucher programs that allowed public funds to flow to students who needed the help the least. Instead, those states are refocusing their investments on helping all students, especially those with working parents or parents who lack the time, money, or interest in supporting their children’s education.
“How does the governor’s plan address those kids?” wrote Dan Reed, a former principal of an alternative school, in an editorial. “It doesn‘t. He wants to help the kids who are already successful. Brilliant! That’s quite a recipe for success — if you have no interest in solving real problems. … Homeschooling requires that one parent not have a job. Not possible for most folks. Charter schools require personal transportation, just like ASD alternative schools, and offer no free lunch and possibly dress codes. Good if you can afford it, impossible if you can‘t. How many kids from low socioeconomic situations attend charter schools? I’d guess very few. It doesn’t even mean the parents don’t care; it means they don’t have a choice, or they think they don’t have a choice, which amounts to the same thing.”
Dunleavy’s failure to get through these “school choice” provisions this year doesn’t mean it’s the end of the story, but at least a lot of people are starting to catch on.
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.
