By BOB GRIFFIN
Governor Dunleavy was right to propose direct bonus payments to teachers. He understands that most of the money we dedicate to K-12 gets intercepted before it makes it to classroom teachers.
In the 2023-24 school year, Alaska spent $576 million for salaries for 7,315 teachers statewide, according to the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development. That was just 19.6% of the total $2.93 billion in K-12 expenditures Alaska made that year, according to the National Education Association (NEA). That means over 80% of what Alaskan’s spent on educating their kids went to buildings, bureaucracies and other elements, instead of direct compensation for teachers.
Between 2004-2024 average Alaska teacher salaries increased just 51.3% according to the NEA, while Alaska inflation was 59.7%. At the same time, overall, per student spending in Alaska increased 99.0% from $11,432/student to $22,747/student.
The actual spending on K-12 for kids in traditional brick-and-mortar schools in Alaska was closer to $28,000/student/year because of 23,000 correspondence school students who only accounted for about 4% overall K-12 expenditures.
In 2023-24, the 7,315 teachers in Alaska were charged with educating 119,096 students in Average Daily Attendance (ADA) — or 16.3 students per teacher. The actual student to teacher ratio for Alaska kids in traditional brick-and-mortar schools is significantly lower — when considering the 23,000 correspondence school students.
Correspondence programs average ratios of 110 students per teacher. That means the more traditional schools in Alaska only had 13.5 students in average daily attendance per teacher – slightly lower than the US average of 13.9 according to the NEA.
The trend of teachers becoming a smaller share of overall expenditures not unique to Alaska. It literally takes more than twice as many adult employees to educate our kids as it did a few decades ago – and the results are arguably worse.
No other industry sector has experienced this level of productivity implosion. In 1950 it took 52 school employees per 1,000 students to run US schools. In 2020 it took 135. It would be hard to imagine a grocery store staying in business very long if they had to pay for more than double the number of checkout clerks they had in 1970’s, for a store of the same size.
Underutilization of facilities is also robbing resources from classrooms. The Anchorage School District currently has the capacity for roughly 25,000 students in K-5 elementary schools. By their own projections, ASD will have only around 12,000 kids in those schools by 2029 — when considering the large number of K-5 kids in correspondence and charter school programs that are not housed in ASD facilities.
When combining facility underutilization with the rapid escalation in the cost to build and maintain school building, we can start to build the picture of how we diverting more resources away from our educators and their classrooms.
In 2015, ASD did a major renovation of Airport Heights Elementary School — extending some classrooms, adding a multi-purpose room, a music room and mechanical room. That project cost a little over $20 million, including planning. The previous year, Winterberry Charter School was able to construct their entire campus, from and undeveloped site, with roughly the same student enrollment as Airport Heights, for $3.5 million.
With the backdrop of severe underutilization of elementary floorspace, ASD is now in the middle of a $50 million project to double the size of Inlet View Elementary School, while the remaining underutilized ASD campuses have more than $1 Billion in deferred maintenance.
Alaska dedicates a lot of resources to K-12 – about 5% of our state GDP — higher than every other state except Wyoming. That’s a higher percentage of GDP than the US government contributes to defense spending.
The quality of teachers is critical to success of students. Teachers in Alaska and across the US, should be upset that buildings and bureaucracies appear to be a higher priority than their pay.
Bob Griffin is on the board of Alaska Policy Forum and served on the Alaska Board of Education and Early Development.
Thanks Bob for the numbers. We need to get these numbers out there so people can see how their money is being wasted.
Alaska Education Reform and Local Control Act…too simple to imagine?
Bob, teachers are nearly only getting reached out to personally by NEA paid soldiers. Anyone carrying the weight of facts they wish teachers would better understand: Invite us to a coffee chat; come to our kids’ games and chat with us in the stands; be company for a single parent teacher on a Costco run. Thanks to bad school turnover, many teachers come up quickly from Outside, and only the union feeds them info.
We need conservative folks to build real relationships with teachers. Many are hurting, or jaded, or just afraid that asking questions will cost them their job. Many are women that have a high need for security and no drama.
Those who want to be in a network to help connect with teachers can reach out at LibertyLeaders (dot) org, a new Alaskan conservative network looking to stitch up the unhelpful fractures in our Republican factions. We need folks to step up and be hope for my amazing colleagues.
Typo for network! LibertyLeadersAlaska (dot) org. Looking forward to connecting!
Amanda – is it libertyleadersunite ‘.’ org? They have a school choice conference coming up….
Hi Elizabeth, our network is LibertyLeadersAlaska.org. It’s a work in progress, so first stage is gathering together caring conservatives. Looking forward to connecting folks who are signing up soon.
I’m just a recess monitor and tutor. I am not afraid of losing my job. I will and do speak up for teachers. I’m not there every day as long as the teachers are and I have nothing but the utmost respect and admiration for all the teachers I’ve had the honor to work with. The patience level is astounding and they all share the goals of truly educating the kids as best can be done.
Thanks, Manda for all you do! So glad to connect with you. Let’s do coffee soon!
As long as the NEA/AFT keeps negotiating pay raises, smaller class sizes, more in service days, more days off, and no accountability for student scores, teachers will keep their mouths shut. Teachers union grift prevents any meaningful progress on scores and any cost control. If those unions, teachers and adminstrators were held to account for test scores before future raises were implemented, you might see progress. But not until the NEA/AFT is neutered, the Anchorage School Board is replaced and Anchorage School District Superintendent DOCTOR Jharrett Bryantt is fired, we’ll continue to get the same old crap that we’ve been force fed for the past 30 years.
How much of it goes to the teacher’s unions so that they can donate directly and indirectly to commies and Democrats? Campaign brochures, radio and TV ads, billboards. Internet ads. Hired consultants. Attorneys. Scott Kendall.
Democrats will spend any money they can find to advance their agenda.
Only 8% of teacher dues goes back to them to represent them in the district. The rest goes to crazy stuff and national political machines.
Why aren’t they upset? They’re godless and pro sodomy. They thrive on suffering and corrupting the youth.
There’s no emphasis on learning skills that make a stable society, just making skill-less sodomites with daddy issues for a paycheck and a pat on the back.
T. My opinion based off witnessing the last 20 years of public school education evolution
Thank you Amanda T. for stepping forward on the behalf of teachers that have Conservative values and wish to teach our children “the truth”. Please do not stop! We need you to fight for our children’s education.
Again, THANK YOU!!!
Bob, do you know if the urban and suburban school districts that offer home school programs “bill” the local municipalities for home school students, the same as brick and mortar students – effectively doubling the amount of money the district receives per student (formula $$ + property tax support = X2.)? If so, the difference is even greater in terms of what the rural/statewide home school programs accomplish on roughly half the financial support.
In actuality, ASD is approaching 2.5 million square feet of excess capacity across its total school footprint.
Then here we are, with our K-12 education being dead last in the United States. Cut ALL spending on anything other than maintenance, and make teacher’s salaries dependent on how well their students do on testing scores.
Yes, things can be trimmed, but surprisingly maintenance department at ASD is the one department that had major red flags in their audit (info is online).There are schemes where a truck or tool is deemed “broken” or “lost”, and gets replaced, and then gets sold at an auction, or “found” and sold, to a buddy of the guy that deemed it “broken.” Feel free to call them to ask more.
The Capitol Planning department, which brought us the double vision Inlet View school, and the bloated costs above what Winterberry paid for their school that Bob mentions above, is also spending freely. It’s up to you Anchorage property tax payers to not assume your dollars are being wisely spent. ASD needs your oversight and checkin. Show up at Board meetings. Call the members.
“The quality of teachers is critical to success of students. Teachers in Alaska and across the US, should be upset that buildings and bureaucracies appear to be a higher priority than their pay.”
I’m glad I’m not the only one who has been shouting this out! Thank you, Mr. Griffin.
ASD and some Anchorage parents seems more interested in paying for empty buildings than educating their children.
You’re welcome. I love teaching, love my colleagues, my students, and the legacy of amazing education in our country. We can get back to our wholesome, green and growing roots, but need to get together in real time to show support for good education. So hug a teacher today, and reach out at website above 🙂
Really, Bob?
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Alaska’s education industry can rob taxpayers anytime industry officials want for as much as they want …and taxpayer victims should feel sorry or bad or guilty or something because big robbers apparently don’t share loot with little robbers?
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Alaska Policy Forum’s just now realized “…that buildings and bureaucracies appear to be a higher priority than their pay.”?
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Is it worth asking where APF was when this came out March 9, 2022: “The Anchorage School Board voted to create a construction monopoly controlled by labor unions, limiting competition on construction projects over $1 million to those companies hiring union labor.”?
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Maybe a hint about industry “priorities”, Bob?
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Teachers don’t have a great big nasty, noisy, politician-owning, omnipotent union fully capable of getting them salaries they want?
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Remind again why parent-taxpayers forced to home-school or private-school children while paying property taxes for public education ranked near top in cost and bottom in quality should give a damn about teacher salaries, or for that matter, any education-industry salary?
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Bob, you’ve been around long enough to know this wreck can’t be salvaged. Bitch about teacher salaries, throw another mil or two at it, but without viable election and grand-jury systems, how does paying more money to teachers fix anything?
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How do we know this? Because a smart guy like you would have fixed it already
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…which may be why so few people outside the education industry seem to care what happens to it.
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Why not just let the derelict sink? Survivors might be “upset” enough to bring in a crew from some country that’s top-ranked in education, who clearly know what the hell they’re doing, who’ll start up a decent school system, run it for a year or two, with none of the current mob involved, see what happens?
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What’s it gonna do, not work, Bob? What have we got to lose?
Dunleavy was a superintendent of one school district, and on the school board of another. I would like to see the breakdown of administrative vs teacher pay for those districts during his time at the helm, as well as figures on student attainment in math and reading. I have never seen anything indicating how he did in fact manage a district for which he was the chief executive any different from the districts which are presently receiving significantly less inflation-adjusted support per student from the State vs what he accepted as a District official.