By DAVID BOYLE
The Anchorage School District is working with Anchorage State Sen. Loki Tobin to steal your Permanent Fund dividend and give it to the school districts.
Sen. Tobin is supporting legislation to increase the Base Student Allocation by an astounding $1,963. She says that’s to inflation proof the BSA since FY2011 and the schools need that increased funding to maintain their current excellence.
Actually, Alaska’s public schools are losing thousands of students to homeschool parents who seek better education options for their children. The districts must compensate for this loss of students by increasing the per student state funding for the remaining students.
Legislative Finance calculates that for every $100 increase in the BSA, there is a $25.7 million increase in state funding.
That would increase state funding to K12 schools by more than $504,491,000. And that increase would continue year after year through the state’s funding formula. This would not be a one-time cost.
In terms of last year’s dividend payout, that would be 359,000 PFDs.
But that’s not all. The Anchorage School District also wants the state to increase transportation funding due to its increased costs. Remember, the district increased its costs with a huge pay increase for bus drivers.
The district wants to increase the current $481 per pupil funding by $324, which would be $805 per student. That would be more than $34 million in state funding for the Anchorage School District.
Note that the ASD does not transport all its 42,431 students. It doesn’t provide transportation to any of its charter students, although it receives state funding for them.
Approximately 15,000 students are transported by ASD. With the new funding of $805 per student, the district would receive more than $2,000 per transported student.
If the state’s transportation funding is increased to $805 per student, the total cost would be $102,984,455, using student numbers for 2023-24.
That’s another 73,950 PFDs, based on the payout of $1,404.
So, the BSA increase and the transportation increase would take the PFDs of 432,950 Alaskans.
It gets even more confusing. In the last legislative session Sen. Tobin sponsored SB52. which listed a BSA increase of only $1,000 for school year 2023-24.
In February, 2024 the Anchorage School District said it could get by with an increase of $110 in the BSA.
And the Alaska Association of School Boards said the BSA needed to be increased by $860 for school year 2023-24.
On Dec. 17, the Anchorage School Board passed a joint resolution stating the need for increased state funding.
The district hopes to get the Assembly to also support the joint resolution with a vote at its Jan. 7 meeting.
What do you think? Should the K-12 education industry take thousands of PFDs to pay for a mediocre system with no accountability for results?
You can get your “3 minutes of freedom” at the next Assembly meeting, Jan. 7.
David Boyle is the education writer for Must Read Alaska.
