By ALEX GIMARC
I listen (however painfully) to the other side in the political debates of the day, especially if a particular politician has “grown in office” and joined the other team.
One of these is State Senator Cathy Giessel, currently the Senate majority leader.
She was first elected to the State Senate as a conservative in 2010, and was targeted by then-AFL/CIO head Vince Beltrami in a knock-down, drag out, full-body-contact campaign in 2016, a campaign she won by a couple percentage points. Somewhere along the way, she started drifting left politically, irritating her constituents sufficiently to get removed from office in the 2020 Republican primary. She was reelected two years later in a newly reconfigured district under ranked-choice voting. Upon that reelection, her new best friends forever were the big labor unions who now supported her, and she immediately caucused with Democrats.
Giessel writes a weekly newsletter. The latest version was all about justifying increases in education spending. She starts it with the following question:
Should a child’s ability to read depend on the price of oil?
She then says no, based on: Our Constitution requires the State of Alaska to “maintain a system of public schools open to all children of the state…:
The rest of the newsletter is an attempt to justify the Senate majority effort to jack up public education spending, dumping more money into a failing system expecting different results. Her crack about the price of oil is a nicely crafted bait and switch, as her majority already has that increased spending paid for with the Permanent Fund dividend and an eventual raid on the Permanent Fund itself.
Note that not a single word is written about accountability for either the public education establishment or the legislators who keep increasing its funding.
Note also that there is nothing in the State Constitution that demands a specific dollar amount spent per student. Indeed, in this state, the more money spent on public education generally ends up in worse educational outcomes. If high per-student spending was truly as important as she pretends, the Bush schools would be doing best of all, as they get the most money per student. But they don’t.
What actually works is that the closer control of the spending is to the student (in the hands of the parents), the better the educational outcome. This is why the Homeschoolers are doing best of all, at a miniscule cost per student per year compared to the massive funding of the public schools.
When control of the money is far, far away from parents you get foolishness like we have here in Anchorage with an unqualified Superintendent, DEI, CRT, the trans agenda, and occasional porn in the school libraries. The Superintendent apparently believes things are going well enough that he feels free to dabble with turning ASD into a sanctuary for illegals.
The tragedy of all this is that historically bad failing statewide school systems are being reformed, particularly in the South. Bob Griffin on Feb 7 wrote about the stunning improvement of Mississippi public education. Louisiana has a similar story.
Why not Alaska? Because we confuse increased spending with better educational outcomes, something we’ve demonstrated does not happen.
The Senate majority is telling us what they are going to do. The House majority is not far behind. It is up to us to make sure they are not successful.
Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He was a small business owner and Information Technology professional.
