An Instagram notice indicates that high school students across Alaska plan to walk out of classes on Friday, demanding more funding for schools with a higher base student allocation.
The walkout is planned for fourth period, around 1 pm, and media has been alerted, so the walkout photos and footage will be splashed across the websites of mainstream media in an effort to pressure lawmakers in Juneau.
The timing for the walkout coincides with the movement of House Bill 69, a school funding bill that would increase the per-student state funding, known as the BSA, by $1,000, costing the state about $250 million more per year. The Alaska Senate plans to consider the bill on the floor of the Senate on Friday, and the governor has already said he will veto it, if it passes.
Party time for high school students! We used to call it senior skip day. 🤣
Gee wonder whose idea this was.
Simple. Keep going and don’t come back.
Go visit a homeless camp in Anchorage and see what a poor education and attitude will get you.
Wonder who or what union is promoting this juvenile waste of school time.
Participating students should be required to make up the time, but they will not be required. Hence, with the success of such activities, you can be assured that future “slights” will result in similar waste of time and education.
So discussed with the conversations around educational antics not associated with academics ,actually the drought of any relationship to causes of failure to learn, but high on counter productive activities that serve to hide those failures so readily visible and undeniable.
These spoiled brats aren’t even paying taxes yet and yet they want to crater – devastate the system. As a long time Taxpayer, why should I make any more investment in their education when the by-product is ranked last in test scores, competency, utility, and or usefulness? Why is it in the best interest to the existing Taxpayer? What exactly do we get out of it when the current plan hasn’t produced exceptional performance results?
Go ahead, skip another day of education, what difference will it make!!!
Dear Students: Gimme Gimme Gimme. Any surprise what you are being taught and have been for years? If you are fortunate to graduate, get off your *sses and find creditable employment. It isn’t too “hard” if you apply your lazy entitled selves! In the meantime, get out of my pocketbook and make something of yourselves. The schools are doing you no favors. The NEA is not your friend! When you bankrupt the taxpayers and drive them out of their homes, It’s on your back! Then you might get it! Good luck kids!
Amen Rob. NEA sucks. Literally, it’s always for the kids of corse. Enrollment is down by big numbers and they always want more.
In 2024, the dividend cost to the state was over one billion and 62 million dollars. I have no children or grandchildren attending schools in Alaska. Nor am I or anyone in my family employed by any school districts.
Though I am certainly not wealthy and the dividend is very welcome, I would gladly receive a smaller dividend to increase the bsa. Our young people are our future. NORTH TO ALASKA!!
You have no children or grandchildren attending school in Alaska?
No surprise why you would care less about the quality of education.
It is extremely important to the parents and grandparents of children receiving diplomas whether they can read a tape measure with proficiency or just guess at what all those little marks on the ruler really mean.
I am speaking from experience hiring high school students who were not able to perform that task.
They were only capable of operating a broom until they gave up and quit.
Gunner, that’s a very nice sentiment, however not sure what it will actually accomplish.
Simply throwing money at it and hoping for better results has not worked in decades. Our kids are dead last in reading and math and have been there for a many many years, despite repeated one time increases each year to school funding (BSA). Comparatively we rank at the top when it comes to education funding, yet our results are dismal. The loss in potential to our state by graduating kids, who need remedial classes as soon as they enter college or can not read to comprehend basic instructions, write a coherent sentence and do enough math to balance their check book should be considered almost criminal. In my opinion rewarding poor performance with even more funds seems counterproductive and frankly idiotic.
When you read the goals our school board members listed in the last election, improved educational outcomes for our children wasn’t even on the list. It was all about getting more money for the district and benefits for teachers and staff.
Technically it needs to be pointed out that the PFD costs the state NOTHING! These funds are earnings from the Permanent fund and are supposed to go 50/50 to the state for government and the other half to the people. This is every Alaskans individual earnings from our communally own oil. Yet the state legislature repeatedly takes large chunks of the portion allocated to us individually, because they are unwilling to budget and let go of their pet projects.
If you want to give your share to the school district, I am sure they will not turn it down. I for one will wait to see if they change their culture from a jobs/union program to an educational one before I feel they deserve any more funds.
Gunner, you’re wrong in a very fundamental—and frankly, socialist—way: the PFD and its earnings were never the state’s. So to claim that the dividend costs the state a billion dollars is simply false.
Patrick Henry, I believe you are the one who is wrong. The pfd has zero earnings. The permanent fund, which does have earnings is the state of Alaska’s permanent fund.
I believe you are confusing the dividend with the fund, from which the dividend come from.
And I believe you forget that none of us has mineral rights to our property which played a part in allocating the pfd in the first place. We have seen that, in any circumstance, people will spend what they are given and our legislators would cry poormouth no matter what the state gets. Maybe they should learn how to be good stewards. The distribution of the pfd was not intended to be taken to fund the state. Walker introduced it. When my children were young,we used it for their winter gear. A lot of families need that boost each year. P.S. I would bet my last dime that those high schoolers could not even give a good justification for more money. I’m guessing they are acting on listening to their parents and teachers rant.
Carol, are you aware that when Alaska petitioned congress to become a state, congress was concerned that Alaska, due to its remoteness, size, weather etc. would be unlikely to have enough industry or a population large enough to fund the expenses of governing the state?
This is why they determined the subsurface rights should go to the state, in order to fund itself.
The dividend, which many consider to be a God given right, was created by Gov. Hammond, Hugh Malone and others so that Alaskans would stay involved with government budgeting. With the wealth from oil at that time, the state income tax and state school tax were removed.
When I moved to Alaska in 1974, there was no dividend. We paid a state income tax. We paid a school tax. We helped our neighbors, waved at passing motorists and lived in the Greatland..
Seems to me, many now just have their hand out for that dividend and saying” by God don’t tax me!”.
Remember jfk saying “ask not what your country can do for you. But ask what you can do for your country”?. Replace the word country with state.
Gunner, the Permanent Fund Dividend ARE the earnings from the Permanent Fund!
Each year the semi-independent Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation transfers the earnings of the fund (also know as the dividends) to the state treasury (or recently 5% of market value). Per statute 50% of those earnings belong to individual Alaskans and 50% belong to the state government for government expenses. It use to be that the state was simply a convenient pass-through entity for distribution and technically the state and legislature has no right to that portion of the earnings. By paying a Dividend to the people they are using the funds that were already the individual Alaskans portion and never intended for state services. That they now use the people’s portion as a convenient piggy bank, we have Gov. Walker and the Alaska Supreme court (who does not understand the meaning of the word “shall”) to thank for.
If the state owned the fund and its earnings outright then they would have raided the corpus long ago and kept all the earnings. As it stands they need a vote by the people to do just that, as it is Alaskans money not the state’s.
By the State Constitution, the oil in this State belong to the people, not the Government, hence the Permanent Fund and the Dividend. None of it belongs to the State. The fact that Walker raided the Fund doesn’t make it his, any more than continuing to use it for government makes it theirs. It belongs to the people by law.
Then give til you hurt. Then give more.
Hate to break it to you but Alaska is in the top 10% for education spending in the United States, yet at 48th place in student test scores for education in the United States. Throwing more money at education is not going to fix it. Education needs to be revamped from the top down.
If I had walked out of school to protest anything my dad would have put his shoe up my ass.
Definitely, but BACK then, they TAUGHT something in school worthwhile besides WOKE/transgender garbage.
Great video opportunity to do a “ man on the street interview with some students. Ask them some simple questions.
History questions
Geography?
The answers ( or lack of) would be telling
I would add to those questions like:
What are you going to do with your dividend this year? (wonder if anyone will donate it to the state or their school district)
Bring a collection basket and ask them to contribute (they are in HS after all and soon to be entering the work force).
Ask them what “BSA” means and have them define what it does……
With any luck, they wont come back.
Hit the parents with a thousand-dollar truancy fine, see how quick that crap quits.
Withhold their dividend and donate it to the schools. They can put their money where their mouth is.
Expel them alll!!!
A walk-out to protest in support of a BSA increase? Just another item to add to the list of reasons why not to throw money at this education Frankenstein.
Meaningless acts of children.
It’s called “skip day.” Been around for the past 6 or 7 decades. Hardly new.
Money’s not the issue – everyone knows that.
It’s failed leadership in the school districts.
Liberals FAIL in leadership positions – look at the problems in all of our big cities – what’s the common denominator?
Now the kids are acting dumb.
Parents, where are you?
It’s not like they were learning anything anyway.
Prime example of why the schools do not need anymore financial assistance. Where is the accountability. Why are Public Schools being blown out of the water by Charter and Home Schooling academically? Students and Educators both should be required to make up any lost educating time for such charades.
I’m sure they where instructed to do so…….Now if the kids would only listen to their teachers as well during the ABC’s . More money does not make for a better education, it only gives them more play time. In the 50’s the average cost was $225 equivalent to $3,095.68 today when adjusted for inflation.
In the 2020-2021 academic year, the Anchorage School District (ASD) reported spending approximately $19,177 per student. Are todays students that much smarter?
Parents please give your children a spoon of Caster OIL….They are constipated !! This protest is counter to Public Funded ABUSE ???? Does the Teachers Union support it……U BETYA !
I’m not in favor of one more dime going towards our horrible school system ( I don’t even call it “education” system). That said, I’m glad to see them out of the schools. They may actually learn something today.
It’s not the puppets that are the problem, it’s the (democrat) puppeteers. Cheers –
I wonder if any of the students know how a checking account works.
If you don’t have money in the account, you can’t take more out to spend!
99.999% of them are just doing it to get out of classes for a day.
.
Meaningless whining
I call BS!!!! I would threaten to withhold diplomas from any student that walks out of class but, a diploma is worthless anymore. Any excuse to skip school, make a splash on social media!
What a homeschooled kid do?
They get the education they deserve, entrance to a good college, a high paying job, and then they hire on the losers that walked out for this to wash their cars and cut their grass.
The good news is they won’t suffer from any lack of quality education. The bad news is … these stooges are getting trained to become the next generation of lemmings to vote for Marxist government.
What good has school funding done for them?
Channel 2 and the ADN better get over to West High in Anchorge to cover the staged event.
When I was in high school (during the Cretaceous Period) I would have been willing to walk out of class in solidarity with National Potato Soup Day.
Stop using kids as political props. Disgusting behavior that only serves to further alienate the public.
When my homeschooled kid complains about not getting enough of something that he hasn’t earned I let him walk out, too. I “let” him walk right out from schoolwork and do yard work or clear snow depending on the season; perform maintenance on the exterior of the house; pick up dog crap in the backyard; shop-vac the garage; scrub the toilets and the showers; etc. He then realizes the value in NOT being petulant, self-entitled whiny ass.
yet another reason to rid our selves of our un-experienced stuperintendent for lack of control over the school district. We need DOGE up here for state, city and schools to show where the money is going.
Right out of the NEA’s playbook! Using children to advocate for more money for them is disgusting! I hope the blowback from using this tactic is intense.
Every student who walks out should be required to take a competency test in math and English reading and writing. Each student should subsequently be placed at the grade level appropriate for his or her score. I’m guessing all schools would have to hire a lot more elementary school teachers.
All they are learning is to be intolerant activists, this is not how they learn debate and compromise and manners…these are tantrums by children.
Adults who support this are weak minded and fool hearty.
The whole state needs to be DOGED!
Without fiscal accountability we’ve got nothing.
Instead of protesting for more money for education, how about demanding more education for the money? Alaska has the most expensive education system in the country, and the kids are being ripped off with a subpar education. It’s sad to see such indoctrination. Like so many on the left, they equate better education with more money rather than equating it with the creation of more marketable skills at graduation. Just the concept of this protest shows us how benign the reasoning skills of Alaska public school students are and how they have become willing pawns of those who train them to perform on cue like circus animals.
Social justice! by the way of school education! uhmmm!? most don’t know history, math and spelling!
Bolsheviks in training n’est ce pas? SNORT!
This was on KTUU”s site (another far left mouthpiece): “ASD released a prewritten statement regarding the walkouts, saying the district “supports students’ rights to free speech, including the right to take part in peaceful protests like today’s walkouts.”
I don’t know about anyone else but, if I were to “skip” class and gave THAT as an excuse, I may have been suspended. But, with Houston Texas’s own Superintendent Dr. Jharrett Bryantt at the helm and our current School Board, this is just another progressive civics lesson field trip.
Like most hormone-soaked high school students, they regurgitate what’s fed to them at home and in the classroom. Little do they know that, even with shrinking student enrollment, little to none of the money derived from an increase in the BSA will make their Secondary Ed experience any better.
But… thanks to an under 17% voter turnout in the last municipal election and, a heavily ANEA/NEA lobbied cluster in Juneau, you can bet the ASD will get what they want. Why? Because Alaska is awash in leftists who’ve sh-t in their home state’s mess kits, moved to Alaska and, the on-going pissing match between RHINOS and conservatives. In that equation, the leftist are winning.
Agree! Every time I see a school bus loaded with the children of Alaska’s future, I wonder what it will be after I’m gone. I’m angry because I grieve for it at this point in time. The schools were wonderful here back in the day when my family arrived in 1959. I’m grateful for the teachers I had – the best in math, science, biology, chemistry, literature, history, even Latin and other languages. They were dedicated in those days and had high expectations of their students. I never knew the political affiliation of any of them – it wasn’t an issue back then. They were there to teach.
(West High -1963)
Agreed SASSY. I had great teachers in Palmer in the 80s I’m still in contact with a few of them. Many of them have passed away now. Really had a group of characters for teachers. They all loved to teach.