OPINION: Dunleavy’s rhetoric doesn’t match his record on school funding

Has been updated: 46 few minutes ago release date: 47 few minutes ago

Will the real Mike Dunleavy please stand up? On March 31st, Governor Dunleavy wrote a very interesting opinion piece. Sadly it didn’t match his recent behavior so I was confused. He said he supported the BSA increase, but vetoed half of the one-time spending from last year’s budget and this year vetoed the BSA increase that passed overwhelmingly in the House and Senate. . This confuses the entire budgeting process and leaves education funding unclear. The district is preparing to lay off hundreds of employees because it needs to use the best budget information available, but it doesn’t significantly meet the school’s needs.

At the same time, Governor Dunleavy has said he wants to reduce teacher turnover and attract new teachers to Alaska. His recent actions (vetoing SB 140) did just the opposite. Acting at the behest of the conservative House majority (failing to override his veto), lower wages for teachers across the board, establishing a defined benefit retirement plan for teachers, and the governor and majority’s inability to fund education. Between laying off hundreds of teachers every year, etc., even if we pass a budget, until the last moment (or later), we end up with an untenable situation for teachers. Would anyone in their right mind agree to continue working under such conditions, or even go to work under such conditions?

Demand for public school choice is increasing, he says. It is not clear on what basis he makes that claim. Adjacent to Governor Dunleavy’s commentary, Kelly Lessens provided factual commentary using current data. She was interested in how many students were on waiting lists for lottery processes to gain access to schools and programs outside of their neighborhoods, or special programs within their neighborhoods. She found that 1,280 people applied, of which she found 388 were to charter schools. To put that into context, of the 43,000 students with ASD, only 3% of her total applied to the lottery, and less than 1% of her applied to charter schools. The governor supports charter schools and has vetoed funding increases to the BSA, but language immersion programs, which are facing challenges due to BSA funding, currently have twice the demand for charter schools. There are a total of 851 applications. Data suggests the special interests he talks about may be charter school lobbyists.

He also said the district’s budget is uncertain. Really? Searching for the Anchorage School District’s budget, he found a 481-page document with a detailed breakdown of the budget. Perhaps one of his staff should give it a try.

The governor says our education system needs reform, but he never explains what’s wrong with that system or what “reform” actually means or looks like. do not have. Student performance in our state is lower than in other states, and this appears to be one of the reasons for the “reform.” However, before fixing the problem, it’s always a good idea to know what caused the problem in the first place.

The reason our students are underperforming compared to other parts of the country is not because we lack charter school or homeschool students. Even if there were twice as many of these students as her, there would be no significant difference in the overall impact of their test scores. This is because they are a very small proportion of the student population. This is because education budgets are not keeping up with the costs of running a world-class education system. This created a situation where student performance declined.

For the past 10 to 15 years, the conservative majority in the Alaska Legislature has consistently refrained from saying, “If you show us better results, we’ll show you better funding.” Flat funding reduces funding due to the effects of inflation. Less funding means fewer teachers, larger classes, and ultimately lower student outcomes. No matter how small you are willing to pay, fixed costs for fixed assets, plant and equipment will continue to accrue. Gas, electricity, insurance, maintenance, and all other costs rise with inflation. The only place to cut when budgets shrink is staffing, and that means teachers. Saying, “We need to improve our results before we increase our budget” makes as much sense as saying, “Until morale improves, the beatings will continue.” Instead of funding education to a level that makes it easier to achieve the desired results, like Boeing, which prioritized cost reduction over safety and suffered multiple disasters as a result, they spend less than what is needed for education. Paying for it is a surefire way to fail.

Politicians like to say that they make decisions based on “the will of the people” or “the opinions of the people.” Recently, there have been many cases in which reliable “people’s will” is expressed. On April 4, there was a statewide strike by students supporting increased enrollment in the BSA. The Anchorage city election passed a school bond, making it clear that the majority supported education. A recent survey by U.S. Sen. Matt Claman of the same district showed that education was the top priority among approximately 440 voters who responded (Sen. Claman’s District H is a relatively conservative district). Ward). The same survey found that only 25% opposed new taxes to balance the budget, 82% opposed statutory dividends, and supported a pension retirement system for civil servants. It is 72%. To those who say this is not a scientific survey, my answer is that given the number of responses and the conservative nature of the district, it is likely that these results will differ from a larger survey across a wider area. is very low. The overwhelming support for education, public employee pensions, and the use of the Permanent Fund to pay for education and other essential government services makes it impossible for another study to yield substantially different results.

It is abundantly clear that the current position of the Governor (and the House majority) does not represent the will of the majority of Alaskans when it comes to funding education. So whose position do they represent? If they really wanted to carry out “the will of the people,” they would go back to SB140 and increase the BSA by another $1,400 to fund pensions for all public employees.

frank jeffries He is a retired professor emeritus of business administration who taught for 24 years in the School of Business and Public Policy at the University of Alaska Anchorage after spending 20 years in various management positions in the private sector.

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