David Boyle: Is Restorative Justice in Anchorage Schools Leading to a Teacher Exodus?

By DAVID BOYLE

There seem to be many teachers who are leaving the profession. The Anchorage Education Association (AEA) says that exodus is due to low salaries and high healthcare premiums. Dozens of teachers in purple AEA shirts recently testified at an ASD School Board meeting that unjust compensation is the greatest issue and may lead them to leave teaching. But what is the real reason so many teachers across the nation are leaving the profession? 

According to a recent Rand study, teachers rated student behavior and unruly classrooms as the number one reason they had left the profession. Misbehaving students even outranked low salaries. Is it possible that classroom management and unruly students could be the leading cause? Maybe the use of restorative justice in disciplining unruly students is not working out as theoretically planned. 

The previous discipline paradigm relied on detention, suspension, and expulsion. Unfortunately, those students that were suspended for several days had difficulty catching up to the class instruction. And the expelled students were pretty much on the streets. 

But the education academicians came up with restorative justice as the new means of correcting a student’s misbehavior. It replaces punishing a misbehaving student with building relationships based on respect and responsibility for one’s actions. 

The new restorative justice paradigm relies on talking circles, conflict resolution, and direct interaction between the offender and the victim. Theoretically, that would work for some students. But it does not work for all students, and maybe the most disruptive ones.  

How did this thing called “restorative justice” originate?  

Restorative justice was conceived because it was thought that minority students were being more harshly disciplined than other students. Black and Hispanic students showed more suspensions and expulsions compared to white students. But maybe the minority students were actually misbehaving. 

The NEA believes the current discipline practices are unfair to Black and Brown students. This is from the NEA Handbook: 

“The Association acknowledges the disparate and disproportionate consequences of such negative disciplinary practices for racially and ethnically diverse students, in particular Black and Latin(o/a/x) students, and believes that district and administrative policies should promote restorative justice practices and positive behavioral choices. The Association, in order to improve human relations, calls for—Schools and classrooms that implement trainings and strategies addressing implicit bias, equity, diversity, racial justice, and restorative justice.” 

It seems as if the Anchorage School District uses NEA-National guidance instead of local guidance to implement its policies. Just like the district did when it implemented its Transgender Administrative Guidelines. 

To determine if the Anchorage School District used restorative justice, I submitted an Open Records request on August 22 and asked the Anchorage School Superintendent if the district had implemented restorative justice. Here is that request: 

In accordance with the State of Alaska’s Open Records request, please provide the following information: 1. District policy on restorative justice; 2. District administrative guidelines and any other rules/regulations/memos implementing restorative justice; and 3. Any district directives to school staff re restorative justice.  

Here is the ASD Superintendent’s response, as usual taking the maximum number of 10 business days to respond: 

From: Office Of The Superintendent <[email protected]> 
Sent: Sep 8, 2025 3:09 PM 
To: XXXX 

Dear Mr. Boyle,

The District has no records responsive to your request dated August 22, 2025.  

Thank you, 

Office of the Superintendent

The district denied that it had restorative justice in effect in its schools.  

Apparently, the district did not look deep enough into its files to find restorative justice. So, I took a deeper look to see if indeed the ASD had restorative justice documented. Here is restorative justice listed in its 2024 legislative priorities: 

Here is another example of restorative justice found in the introduction to the FY26 budget and signed by the school board president, Andy Holleman: 

By implementing restorative justice in its schools, is the ASD increasing the exodus of teachers? Has the district asked classroom teachers how it is working to help them manage the classroom? Only an independent survey of exiting teachers would indicate how unruly students and classroom management impact these teachers. That would be more telling than testimony by AEA purple shirted members demanding higher salaries during current contract negotiations.  

It is well past time allowing a handful of unruly students to disrupt the learning process of most students. Students have a right to learn. And teachers have a right to a well-disciplined classroom. Maybe it is time to stop experimenting with our kids on theoretical ideas from the education cartel. Maybe it is time to return to the former student discipline paradigm. 

With a well-managed classroom, students can effectively learn, and teachers can use their time to actually teach. And we need all the effective classroom teachers we can keep.  

David Boyle is an education writer for Must Read Alaska.