Michael Tavoliero: This self-licking ice cream cone tastes like swamp

By MICHAEL TAVOLIERO

At the state capital, corrupt insiders in the Deep Swamp are actively sabotaging the future of Alaska’s children.

These special interest cronies, who have no genuine concern for our youth’s education and never have, blatantly lie about their commitment to educating our children while shamelessly intending on increasing and redirecting state funds through proposed legislation to feed their own self-serving agendas and enrich the Deep State. 

This display of legislative self-indulgence, another example of the putrid self-licking s___-flavored ice cream cone, has been served to the public by Independent Representative Rebecca Himschoot, a former teacher and frontwoman for the Alaska public education union, and sponsors, Representatives Maxine Dibert, Andy Josephson, Ky Holland, Alyse Galvin, Genevieve Mina, Zack Fields, Ashley Carrick, Andi Story, Sara Hannan, Calvin Schrage, and Ted Eischeid. 

House Bill 69 is a two-page opus aimed at inflating the Base Student Allocation as if swelling a balloon that will soon deflate under its own weight is the answer to Alaska’s education tragedy.

The bill proposed to amend AS 14.17.470 which is the base student allocation (BSA). It is now one simple sentence which reads, “The base student allocation is $5,960.”

The BSA is a foundational component of Alaska’s public school funding formula in an already extremely convoluted and deceptive process designed by the public education union to wean every dollar out of the feds, state and taxpayers while providing no promise of educational improvement, performance or results for Alaska’s future, our children. 

The HB 69 sponsor’s statement contends that Alaska’s constitutional duty to provide free public education extends to every child and young adult, yet the Constitution only mandates that the legislature “establish and maintain a system of public schools open to all children.” 

The sponsors’ call for universal free education is a calculated deception—a lie designed to conceal their own graft. The Constitution only requires that we provide basic educational access for children, leaving further opportunities to legislative discretion.

By exploiting this narrow mandate, the cronies behind HB 69—and ultimately the Democrat-RINO controlled state legislature—have derailed education progress in our state. The blame belongs squarely on their failed policies and self-serving agendas.

So how do Rep. Himschoot and the gang of 11 justify pushing for universal free education when the very text of the Constitution falls far short of that promise? They don’t. They provide emotional hyperbole with hopes that they can get away with this. They are simply fronting for the public education union and its corrupt special interests, using this inflated promise as a smokescreen to enrich their campaign coffers at our children’s expense. 

It is utterly outrageous that these 12 legislators have pocketed over $1 million in 2024 campaign contributions—nearly 25% of which come directly from unions and other special interest groups. And that’s not even counting the additional special interest individual contributions that only further promote these corrupt, self-serving agendas.

The sponsors’ lie is especially problematic given the grim realities: Alaska consistently ranks among the lowest in educational performance nationwide, and it bears the burden of the one of the highest cost per student. Is this sinking in yet?

The sponsor statement continues “Unfortunately, years of flat funding and rising inflation have degraded Alaska’s public education system, resulting in larger class sizes, closed schools, and fewer educational opportunities for children and families.” 

Flat funding and rising inflation are not to blame here. The real culprit is the top-down state education policies that force local districts into a cycle of bureaucratic incompetence and mismanagement, breeding an ideology that not only tolerates but actively promotes waste. These misguided state mandates have cascaded down, undermining the quality of education for our children.

In response, House Bill 69 proposes a targeted fix by “inflation proofing” education funding. It aims to raise the Base Student Allocation by $1,808 per student—spread over three years.

If you review the bill, you will notice there are no fiscal notes as of this date. Why? Because the bill is an exercise in mathematical gymnastics designed by the public education union to mislead the public and enrich special interests.

Based on the language of HB 69, I estimate a fiscal note for this bill over a 10-year period adds a total cumulative additional cost of about $3.9 billion to education funding. 

This fiscal note reflects the additional state funding required to implement the amendments to AS 14.17.470 under HB, accounting for both the specified fixed increases and the ongoing impact of a 3% annual inflation adjustment. The note assumes a constant student population of 130,000 and does not factor in potential enrollment changes or other economic fluctuations over the period.

While HB 69 attempts to address the fake funding shortfalls—by increasing the BSA and linking it to inflation—the underlying debate is far from resolved. The sponsor’s broad constitutional claim and urgent funding rhetoric mask a more limited mandate: the Constitution guarantees a public school system for children, not an all-encompassing guarantee for every young adult. 

Even with these funding increases, the systemic issues—reflected in poor performance outcomes and spiraling per-student costs—remain deeply entrenched. Ultimately, it raises critical questions about whether simply pumping more money into a flawed system can genuinely improve educational outcomes in a state already burdened by inefficiency and high costs.

Thomas Sowell writes in “Charter Schools and Their Enemies”:

“Of course it takes money to run a school. But the great emphasis on money differences as an explanation—or excuse—for differences in educational outcomes ignores the plain fact that the most fundamental things are among the least expensive to teach. Mathematics has been taught for centuries, requiring nothing more expensive than a book, pencil and paper for students, and chalk and a blackboard for teachers. Many “innovative” and “exciting” new gimmicks on tangential projects in schools are likely to be far more expensive. Nevertheless, it remains a common defense of substandard educational outcomes in the traditional unionized public schools to claim that money is the reason—that the schools have ‘inadequate funding’”

The last sentence of their sponsor statement, “Increasing Alaska’s Base Student Allocation and indexing it to inflation will ensure Alaska’s public schools have the resources needed to educate children, so they have the knowledge and skills to succeed in life.”.

This last sentence is nothing short of a tragic betrayal of public trust. It deceptively promises that simply providing more resources will miraculously endow our children with the skills needed for success, all while avoiding the hard truth that increasing the Base Student Allocation does not translate to improved educational performance. By presenting proper funding as a magic solution, it misleads the public into believing that more money alone will fix our broken system, thereby obscuring the critical need for genuine reforms and effective management.

If they were honest, they would instead be proposing legislation which puts education accountability at the district level requiring each district to maintain a superlative level of educational performance and outcome without the chains of power and control exercised by the state bureaucracy and its princelings, bought and paid-for politicians and their special interests.

Michael Tavoliero writes for Must Read Alaska.

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