Senate Bill 140, a bill that has various funding components for Alaska school districts, is on the calendar for the Alaska House on Monday when the House gavels in at 11 am.
It started out last year as a bill sponsored by Sen. Lyman Hoffman to bring more broadband to rural Alaska districts through a grant program that had matching state and federal monies. It would benefit not only rural villages but Quintillion, the company bringing fiber optic cable connectivity to much of the Arctic, even though Starlink would be vastly cheaper.
Through time, the bill has been added to and debated, and now contains pay incentives for teachers, and an addition to the base student allocation, sometimes called the BSA. The BSA is the permanent funding formula that is calculated on a per-student basis.
Also in the bill is an increase in correspondence school funding and the governor’s plan to pay teacher bonuses that would be between $5,000 to $15,000, something that is outside the BSA.
The amount that the BSA would be increased could be $300 per student, or could be over $1,400 per student, but it looks like most in the House will settle in the $600 range. More changes to the bill are expected on the House floor, as several dozen amendments are predicted to be in the works. The total cost of SB 140 could be substantial, as this fiscal summary from January shows (in thousands):
State education officials, teachers’ unions, and Democrat lawmakers are arguing for a $1,413 BSA and they are expected to put up a fight for more money. The bill will have to go back to the Senate if it passes the House, due to the many changes, and the Senate is likely to have its own ideas; these differences are typically sorted out in a conference committee between the two sides to reach a compromise.
