Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s education bill proposes several major changes to the state’s education system, including expanding school choice, regulating mobile device use, offering reading proficiency grants, reforming charter school approvals, adjusting school funding formulas, and providing teacher retention bonuses.
Education Commissioner Deena Bishop briefed the Senate Education Committee on the bill on Feb. 24.
Key highlights of the bill include:
- School Choice Expansion – Allows students to attend schools outside their district with specific conditions. Establishes regulations for school capacity, enrollment applications, and appeals.
- Mobile Device Restrictions – Schools must adopt policies limiting student use of personal mobile devices, with exceptions for emergencies, educational purposes, or health needs.
- Reading Proficiency Grants – Schools receive $450 per student (K-6) demonstrating grade-level proficiency or improvement in reading.
- Charter Schools – Creates a streamlined application process, allowing charter school proposals to be submitted directly to the state board instead of local school boards.
- Student Transportation Funding – Increases per-student transportation grants by 20% and adjusts for inflation.
- School Construction Debt Moratorium – Extends a freeze on new school bond debt reimbursement until 2030.
- Vocational & Technical Education – Adjusts funding formulas to increase support for technical education and require reporting on program expenditures.
- Teacher Retention Bonuses – Introduces a temporary three-year program offering lump sum payments ($5,000–$15,000) to eligible full-time teachers as an incentive for retention.
- Legislative Report Requirement – Directs the legislature to evaluate the education system and recommend changes, including new accountability metrics beyond standardized testing.
Overall, the bill seeks to increase school choice, improve literacy, support vocational education, and address teacher retention while maintaining a temporary moratorium on school construction debt reimbursement.
The Democrats in the Legislature would rather the state spend hundreds of millions of dollars more for an education system that has failed students.
This has some effective change and accountability as opposed to the just add money and stir (hope) for improvements.
Better than the legislature and their repeat the same thing over and over and expect different results.
Just adding money has shown across multiple states and the fed level that it has done nothing at all to improve the quality of education.
You pretty much took the words right out of my keyboard.
To Democrats, it’s only about one thing:
.
Get the government money, fast. Then, use of for…..whatever liberal cause the desire. Literacy be damned
Under Dunleavy the fight for separate but unequal schools will continue! We will break the Alaska Constitution so my kids don’t have to go to school with those children.
Voc ed is the best part of this plan. Bring back shop and welding and finance in every high school. Get their hands dirty and teach them useful skills.
An important aspect is that it allows families to dodge three primary problems that won’t go away.
– Underperforming children (or kids w/ low investment parents) often pursue special consideration which brings Federal funds into the classroom and is a time squandering distraction for the teacher that can’t be avoided as the district loooves that extra cash.
– Assuming that all kids should get a college prep style education when some are destined for the trades and elsewhere forces an unfortunate averaging within the classroom and attenuates potential benefit.
When families can choose to avoid the impact of low investment parents and similar w/out penalty it’s a win/win for everyone including the kid that probably doesn’t want to be compared to more academically inclined students.
Want the third? Ask a friend that’s an ASD teacher.
The education bureaucracy is irredeemable. It is like an invasive weed that must be uprooted entirely and thrown in the fire. Otherwise it will only grow back as toxic as ever. Without competition there will never be quality. Parents must have a choice. The solution is described in one word: vouchers.
Anchorage School District does not need anything in this State legislation. The Republican Party at one time was for more local control, keeping government out of private lives and keeping religion out of government. Times have changed, people have not
What can be more “local control” than expanding our very successful charter schools? Parents are literally in charge.
For the author: Who are you fooling? Dream On!!!!
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