With little fanfare, the Senate Education Committee on Monday advanced legislation to increase public school funding as districts around the state face a bad combination of rising inflation, expiring one-time money and years of otherwise flat funding from the state.
Senate Bill 52 would provide a $1,000 increase to the base student allocation, a figure that’s run through the state’s foundation formula to determine how much money districts receive each year, for the next school year, a $348 increase the following year and ties school funding to inflation after that.
The $1,000 funding level is what Senate Education Committee Chair Sen. Löki Tobin called a “bold” approach to education when introducing the measure earlier this year. It would cost the state roughly $257 million, enough money to cover the anticipated shortfalls that many school districts are facing. Tobin has said she’s interested in beyond just maintaining the status quo and wants to see the state increase its investment in education.
The measure also includes a measure calling for an online database pulling together data on educational success and spending of school districts.
The measure is one of the Senate’s key priorities and school funding has been the subject of several hearings this session. SB 52 advanced on a unanimous vote and heads next to Senate Finance, the final major hurdle before a vote of the full Senate.
The measure, however, faces uncertainty in the Republican-led Gov. Dunleavy-aligned House where we’ve heard mixed, often conflicting messages from Republican legislators.
On one end of things, there’s House Education Committee co-Chair Rep. Justin Ruffridge who has recognized the need to increase school funding—the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District in his district faces a $13 million deficit (that they’re planning on covering with $10 million in savings and $3 million in cuts) and would receive $17 million under this legislation—and has been particularly interested in understanding the costs of the duties the Legislature has added on in recent years.
“My personal position is that it’s clear to me that education needs some sort of funding in order to continue. We have a lot of unfunded mandates and the list continues to grow right up into the READS Act,” he said at the House Majority’s weekly news conference, referring to the new reading bill passed last year. “School districts, when I talk to them, are nervous about how are we going to produce the outcomes that Alaska parents want to see, which is children being able to read by third grade, without some sort of mechanism by which to accomplish that. That would be funding of some sort.”
Others, like House Education Committee co-Chair Rep. Jamie Allard, R-Eagle River, have suggested that any talk about a permanent increase to school funding should wait. At a news conference on Tuesday, Allard said that the state should first reopen the foundation formula during the interim before making any changes to the funding level next year.
“They need to understand a BSA increase isn’t going to solve the problems,” she said, blaming unions for having too much say in school spending. “I would also be looking at bringing the foundation formula to a task force during the intermittent time of the session so that we can address the formula and calculation. It needs to be torn apart and rebuilt.”
Allard said she was more interested in Gov. Dunleavy’s new education bills—one that would pay teachers bonuses after completing a school year over the next three years and another that largely mirrors notorious “Don’t Say Gay” bills in other states. At the news conference, she suggested the foundation formula incentivizes schools to hold children back pointing, apparently to the formula’s multiplier for special needs students requiring intensive services.
“A lot of people might not know it but within the school district, if your child isn’t proficient and there’s a certain reading that child is paid for by the state. They get $77,000 for each child under special needs that isn’t proficient at reading,” she said. “For every child who is not reading, the school districts are being paid and they’re making money hand over fist, and I will say that on the record.”
To be clear, the funding she’s talking about is specifically for special needs students requiring intensive services. While it may account for a significant amount of funding, only a fraction of public school students actually fall into that category.
When asked about the clear conflict between the two positions, Ruffridge said that he ultimately believes in the committee process and that everyone will have their say on the legislation as one of the 40 members of the House.
Stay tuned.
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.