By SEN. MIKE CRONK
As a 25-year retired teacher, two-year regional school board member, and current state senator, I feel compelled to write about the education struggle in Alaska.
When I reference the National Education Association-Alaska (NEA-Alaska) below, I’m not focusing on the thousands of teachers and support staff who are members. I’m focusing on the leadership.
NEA Alaska President Tom Klaameyer recently penned an op-ed for the Anchorage Daily News, in which he boldly stated, “to be clear, NEA-Alaska did not oppose the policy language ultimately stripped out of HB 69.”
Oddly, I find myself saying thank you and am grateful that he spoke the truth. Of course, NEA-Alaska did not oppose the language in the committee substitute for HB 69, after all, why would they?
For perhaps the first time in recent memory, they’ve proudly demonstrated their allegiance and displayed the truth: This legislation was built for them, by them, and championed by their legislative allies. The committee substitute introduced in the Senate Education Committee read like a blueprint of NEA-Alaska’s long-standing priorities, crafted not for the benefit of all Alaska students, but for the preservation of control by a single political force.
Let’s walk through what was included, just in case anyone has lingering doubts as to their goals:
First, the bill proposed class size mandates that were framed as a reform but were only designed to apply to the Anchorage School District, where NEA-Alaska’s influence is most concentrated. If this was such powerful policy, should it not apply to all districts in the state? While the concept of reducing class sizes is widely supported (myself included), that was never the true intent.
Instead, this provision served as a strategic tool: Draft a mandate that the Anchorage School District cannot realistically meet, compel it to respond with claims of inadequacy, and ultimately funnel additional funding directly to schools with high NEA membership.
The result? A policy that appears student-centered but delivers minimal benefit to learners while reinforcing the financial and political stronghold of the union.
Second, the bill then talked about so-called “open enrollment” language, celebrated by some as a breakthrough. Well folks, to be honest, districts have been using forms of open enrollment for years. It offered no tangible change to student opportunity but served as a political checkbox to try and garner support from the administration who are seeking to codify existing practices into law and preserve this right and desire of many Alaskan’s families.
Third, the charter school provisions in the committee substitute for HB 69 were an exercise in what is called an illusion, to put it mildly. They were packed with fiscal speak, legal language, deadlines, etc. Despite a significant public appetite for expanding school choice, the bill offered a depth of language that did little to strengthen access, support innovation, or protect the autonomy of charter schools. Again, a big swing and miss.
Fourth, the final, but most discriminatory and damaging aspect of HB 69? A direct attack on Alaska’s correspondence families. Under the original bill, families using state-approved correspondence programs could be denied access to their educational allotment if their child opted out of standardized testing.
Let’s be clear: Alaska statute allows all students to opt out of standardized testing. Yet this bill would punish only one group: correspondence families. Meanwhile, all other public school students in the state exercising the same legal right would face no consequence, no funding loss, and no interference in their educational path. The message couldn’t be clearer, this wasn’t about fairness or accountability. It was about control and working through legal speech to take away their choices.
Laughably, in the same article, NEA-Alaska’s president commented that, “Our dream is to support students robustly in all public-school programs… ensuring they have the resources they need regardless of where they choose to learn.”
This is a chapter pulled right out of the NEA’s playbook, present the magical illusion of support, but advocate from an entirely different angle. Can you picture the parade of buttons, protests, articles and lawsuits that they would wage if a bill like this was directed at brick-and-mortar schools, where the majority of their membership work? Can you begin to hear their battle-cry if the same reporting language the bill tried to levy against correspondence programs was applied to all schools within the state? Again, if the policy attempt was so important in nature and beneficial to Alaska’s children, don’t you think the NEA would have been championing for this to apply to all schools? Of course they did not, because it was never intended to serve that purpose.
The fun certainly did not stop there, as the bill initially included the creation of a biased Education Task Force, one lacking balance and objectivity, stacked with NEA-aligned members, giving the union a long-term mechanism to shape public education policy and direct resources toward institutions it favored. Correspondence schools, charter programs, residential schools and alternative models would likely have been excluded from any meaningful support. This task force would have allowed NEA-Alaska to further entrench its influence, redirecting funding to the schools and systems it deemed worthy, while pushing family-centered programs further to the margins.
So yes, Tom Klaameyer, NEA-Alaska president, we genuinely thank you for confirming in writing exactly what Gov. Mike Dunleavy said: HB 69 is your dream bill, designed not for all Alaskan children, but for one system, one narrative, and one organization to maintain its grip on power. Your support for the Senate Education’s CS for HB 69 reveals the truth correspondence and charter families have known for years: NEA-Alaska’s leadership has no interest in serving all students — only those who fit within a model your organization controls. You demonstrated your priorities in the policies you backed, the families you chose to ignore and the silence you displayed on discriminatory language included within that bill.
To the families across Alaska who choose a different path — whether through homeschooling, correspondence programs, residential, or innovative charter options — know this: Your voice matters, your children matter, and your educational choices deserve equal respect under the law.
To the families whom children attend brick and mortar schools — you and your children also matter — you are being painted a very blurred picture of what is actually happening and people like myself are the ones standing strong in support of your children also. We can’t continue to do the “same thing” and expect results. We must demand for policies (like the Reads by 3 legislation) put in place that directly affect outcomes, give the teachers the support they so need to succeed in the classroom, and also make sure the money is being spent directly related to students.
Let me be extremely clear, unlike NEA-Alaska: I do support all forms of public education within the state and will work on behalf of all of Alaska’s children to support their education. I will continue to fight for a public education system that truly supports all students, not just the ones that NEA Alaska approves of. Remember, I was a public-school teacher, my children attended public schools (brick and mortar, charter, and residential) and my district is comprised of all models of education, each with its own intrinsic value to their community and to each child’s life.
It’s time all Alaskan families that value educational choices and value educating students know the truth about the narrative that is being fought in Juneau. It’s time, we Alaskans, take back the education of every single student in Alaska and begin “rebuilding” the educational system in Alaska that values each and every learner no matter how they are educated.
As a lifelong Alaskan and someone who dedicated his life to educating our children, I will stand strong to do exactly that.
Mike Cronk is a state senator, retired teacher of 25 years, 2 year Regional School Board member who represents Senate District R, which encompasses nearly 1/3 of the state from the Copper River Valley north across the Interior to Arctic Village, down the mighty Yukon River to Holy Cross west to McGrath as well as West Fairbanks.
Well done and said Senator Cronk. It’s amazing how Democrats have fallen for NEA’s do anything that will benefit our union but not care for students statewide. Shame on them and thank you for exposing their greed and lack of compassion for all students.
Thank you Senator Cronk: U didn’t exress specifically but did hit the edges of the way the NEA files lawsuits using the language of what they support & the way they win: …. thru lawsuits that districts can’t afford to fight. That’s how they got the sexualization books into our childrens school libraries. One might surmise they are representing pedophiles not children; why else would they want our children to become aware of their sex at 3 yrs old; .. they are truely sick!
Klaameyer’s kids go to a private school. Not a charter school or any school that has anything to do with the district, but a full blown privaate school.
What a guy. Don’t the teachers vote for their union leadership?
Ummmmm. Klaameyer’s kids went to Eagle River High School, in the community in which he lives. His children are well past the age of being minors; they are adults. If they do go to private schools, they are institutions of higher learning. Your statement is either disingenuous or an outright falsehood.
Actually, at least of of NEA-Alaska President Tom Klaameyer’s children went to the most expensive private school in Alaska–Pacific Northern Academy. Seems as if the public K12 system was/is not good enough for the NEA-AK president. Why would that be?
Thank you for this bold letter I’d support for Alaska’s children!!!
I’d really like to hear what Mike Cronk thinks we should do instead of standardized testing to determine whether or not publicly funded correspondence school programs are achieving desirable outcomes. I think he agrees with me that it is important that correspondence school students are learning, right? Anecdotally, we know that high achieving correspondence students who go on to in-state universities are excelling in many ways. Do any of us have any idea how well the programs are serving kids in the bottom 50th percentile of correspondence scholars? I want to know that, before we make a big push to expand funding. I have similar questions about the less well known religious schools. Cronk must have some ideas of how to address this question, if standardized testing is off the table.
Dan–Cronk omitted a key provision in the original bill. To earn their allotment, home school students would have been required to participate in some form of assessment, but not necessarily “standardized testing” as he claimed. Assessment includes standardized testing, OR **submission of an annual student portfolio to document learning outcomes.** Cronk lied when he claimed that “families using state-approved correspondence programs could be denied access to their educational allotment if their child opted out of standardized testing” as the original bill explicitly listed another assessment option.
You should spend time with the teachers at the correspondence schools who work with these students. As a general rule, the bottom 50% of correspondence school students out-perform the top 50% of conventional school students. Why don’t you support accountability in both places? Senator Cronk’s excellent point was that the bill made a **different** standard for correspondence school students versus conventional school students.
I’m not sure why my whole comment was edited, but I have some familiarity with the correspondence school system. I was a correspondence student for my primary years (I think it was the Galena School District back then) and do some volunteer work with a different correspondence program.
I hope you are right about the bottom 50%. I have some concerns, but mostly I don’t know. I’m not an expert, but my sense is that nobody knows.
I 100% support accountability for both public correspondence curriculum and neighborhood schools. Whether it’s the same form of accountability or different doesn’t matter to me, so long as some critical mass of the students are assessed (perhaps 90%?).
True Republicans value local control and less government interference. What works in Anchorage, may not work in Fairbanks, or Homer. Local tax payers select what they want through the school board. Senator Cronk is diametrically opposite in asking for centralized State controls over elected local school boards. Making this a union issue is a smokescreen.
Except the school board is not receptive to the taxpayers!!
So glad Cronk beat the hell out of Savannah Fletcher in last year’s Senate race. Thank you, Senator Cronk, for keeping a no good commie out of Juneau.
If NEA-Alaska was even remotely as powerful and clever as Cronk claims, teachers would still have their pensions, rofl.
Frankly Cronk is pushing a rather superficial view of “school choice” manicured for as a wedge issue intended to shutter public schools and promote the antithesis of Jeffersonian educational philosophy.
More problematically for many, he presupposes that spawning somehow conveys upon the spawner some notion of how to raise their children, let alone educate them…
Spoken like a conniver and a deceiver.
And most likely a teacher – who somehow thinks academic degrees and government programs are superior to any parents.
It seems amazing that when speaking of “choice” & how NEA symphathizers traditionally argue against choice the usual reasoning is that choice would reduce the budget for the public schools.
It seems we need to address that issue first & get rid of it entirely.
Let’s try to do an overvue: it boils down to the number of students & teachers versus the upkeep of the school buildings. Instead of designaing a building to a particular type of institution like public or private or charter or whatever, lets view it by allotments of grades, subjects, & financing:
let’s view it firstly in the financing category: financed w/property tax dollars; next lets view it as learning spaces otherwise called classrooms; and next by students & teachers…
so the teaching spaces cost “x” $$$ to maintain & can ideally contain “x” # of learners w/ “x” # of teachers. Instead of designating the entire building to say Public School, it could be #just ELEMENTARY w/grade levels designated, JUNIOR HIGH, HIGH SHCOOL ; & instead of the district or state hiring the number of teachers for the determined subjects, the teachers could be private contractors who would be entirely responsible for their subject matter & the # of students they will teach & what period of time it will cover —> hrs/per day, which days of the week, how many weeks, etc; the teacher will control the billing process & be resonsible for paying for the upkeep of the teaching space; the parents will determine what subjects their child will subscribe to w/which teachers & follow the teachers guidelines .. all legally contracted to. The school district will allocate the contracts to the teachers & have preagreed legal contracts holding the teachers responsible for the results of each student. The teacher will submit the learning results to the district, parents, & state accounting office. The overall view will include all available teaching facilities no matter the ownership.
I believe the excellent teachers will be fully employed & the incompetent teachers will vacate the teaching profession! The results of the teachers will be self evident, the parents will have a record of their childrens results, the district will also have a record of the results, as well as the state which will have the financial control of the purse-strings.
This is just a sample way of what should be adjustable w/time & experience & every parent will have a true choice.
Transportation will be billable thru a bus company or companies (or taxis where necessary) & also be billable to the State Education System…. schedules available to all participants.
Public Education is beyond broken. Irreparable. A true voucher program is the only way to pry the union choke-hold off school boards, school districts and legislators. If parents and students could truly use all their public funding how they’d like under the US Constitution’s support of voucher programs, these greedy child-haters would have nothing left as the funding could promote real choice.
Another help would be for turncoat legislators to caucus with the party they were elected to serve. But sleepy non-participant voters will keep putting us into this kind of endless predicament.
True!
NEA-Alaska’s dream may be to support students, but it’s clearly not to educate students.
For anyone who wants to live in Reality, there are solutions, and none of them include stuffing more money down a NEA toilet.
‘https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2025/04/22/another_thing_folks_like_about_the_south_public_educations_revival_1105099.html
Another Thing Folks Like About the South: Public Education’s Revival
Senator Cronk, many thanks for having the courage to speak up when many of your fellow legislators cower in fear of the power of the teachers unions. It takes guts to speak “truth to power” and power is what the NEA-AK is all about. With declining student numbers, the teachers unions fear losing members so they must further restrict K12 options to parents and students.
It is all about power and control and Senator Mike Cronk knows well what that has done to the legislative process. Thanks again Senator Cronk for having the utmost courage to say what others fear to say