The Alaska Senate Majority, which took a preliminary stance against issuing a full Permanent Fund dividend to Alaskans this year, is proposing the addition of $1,000 to the current base student allocation for schools. That baseline funding would bring the state’s share to about $6,960 per student. It would cost the state at least $257 million.
Senate Bill 52 is a 20% increase to the current basic formula for schools. The Alaska Association of School Boards asked for an increase of $860, but that organization and other education industry representatives are more than willing to accept a larger amount.
The extra funds would come from the Permanent Fund dividend, said Sen. Bert Stedman, who co-chairs the Senate Finance Committee.
“If we had a $1,300 dividend, we could pay for the education increase. We could pay for the deficit and we could pay off all the municipal debt for the entire state for municipalities dealing with the Alaska Bond Bank, about $900 million, with this year’s cash flow. That’s the magnitude of what we have to give and take when we decide what we’re actually going to fund,” Stedman said last week, explaining that it is a choice between greater funding of education and a bigger dividend.
Stedman then said, “We’re going to have to make a choice. Do we want to teach our kids to cash checks? Or do we want to teach them to read and write and do arithmetic?”
Critics of funding increases say there is little accountability in schools, which have turned away from the basics of reading, writing, and mathematics, in favor of gender studies and critical race theory. Students in Alaska have performed at the bottom of the nation for the past few years. Reading scores among Alaska students are a year behind the national average and more than two years behind Florida. Just 28% of fourth graders in Alaska can understand mathematics at grade level, and just 24% were reading at grade level last year.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s 2024 budget has education funding remaining static. But the Alaska Policy Forum has pointed out that per-student funding has grown 32% in the past 20 years, now providing $20,000 per student, which includes federal, state, and local funding. It’s greater than the national average by 23%.
“In Alaska, total revenue grew 32% per pupil, from $15,000 to $20,000 [between 2002 and 2020]. Sixteen states and D.C. increased their education revenues by 30% or more between 2002 and 2020 after adjusting for inflation. State revenues contributed the most to Alaska’s increase, growing 50% between 2002 and 2020 ($8,000 to $13,000 per pupil). Federal revenue grew only 7% ($2,700 to $2,900 per pupil), while local revenue grew 12% ($3,900 to $4,300 per pupil). In 2002, revenues from the State of Alaska comprised 56% of revenues per pupil, while in 2020, the state contributed 63% of revenues per pupil,” AFP wrote in December.
Conservative Ketchikan Mayor Rodney Dial testified to the Senate Education Committee in favor of increasing the base student allocation. He cited a shortfall of $3 million in the upcoming Ketchikan school budget, with 50 or more employees set to be cut in the next budget cycle. The funding for the organized area of Alaska, such as Ketchikan, Dial said, are not getting the same amounts as the unorganized boroughs in the state. Dial asked that organized boroughs be treated equitably with unorganized boroughs, which contribute nothing to their children’s education because they have no local property or sales taxes.
