Last week, a judge in Anchorage decided that the State of Alaska cannot pay for classes taken by students in Alaska, unless those classes are provided by public institutions — government schools. No more can the State pay for correspondence courses or private schools.

Judge Adolf Zeman ruled that paying for private education is an unconstitutional use of state funds, thus effectively stripping that funding from some 24,000 students in Alaska who use correspondence programs. The National Education Association won a sweeping ruling for government control of education, dashing the freedom of choice that Alaska families now have.

Alaska Commissioner of Education Deena Bishop summarized the ruling in a letter to school districts:

“Specifically, AS 14.03.300 states that a correspondence study program will each year provide an ‘individual learning plan’ for each student and sets out certain requirements for an individual learning plan. AS 14.03.310 describes a student allotment program through which a parent or guardian of a student in a correspondence study program may be provided with an annual allotment to ‘purchase nonsectarian services and materials from a public, private, or religious organization’ so long as the services and materials are required under the individual learning plan and the textbooks, services, and other curriculum material are approved by the school district, aligned with state standards, and meet other specific requirements,” Bishop wrote.

“The superior court’s decision focused on the ability to use allotments to purchase materials and services from a private or religious organization and whether that violated Article VIl, section 1 of our state Constitution, which prohibits the expenditure of public funds ‘for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.’ The judge chose to strike down these two correspondence study statutes in their entirety,” Bishop explained.

The ruling was so extreme that even the National Education Association, which brought the lawsuit against correspondence learning, panicked and asked the judge for a stay to try to mitigate the damage — which may include massive political damage for Democrats.

Alaska House Democrats put out a press release immediately, saying they’d be fixing the problem, but the judge said in his ruling that it cannot be fixed via statute, only via constitutional changes.

Based on Zeman’s logic, there are other state expenditures that may now be swept into the same constitutional ban. They may include:

• Schools that bring in private vendors to provide curricula, such as dance, computers, karate, or welding, would not be able to pass through state funding to provide those educational services.
• The Alaska Performance Scholarship, which helps students pay for the cost of an Alaska postsecondary education, could be limited to only state-run campuses. Alaska Pacific University, Alaska Christian College, Alaska Career College, and NIT are private institutions that would also be prohibited from receiving any state money, under Zeman’s ruling.
• Private tutoring companies, such as Frontier Tutoring, would be prohibited from getting state funding for services to help students get up to speed.
• Pick-Click-Give donations that use state dollars to direct charitable contributions to private or religious organizations could also be banned.

The list, at first glance, seems ludicrous, but the ruling is actually that broad. So broad, that it could even be interpreted to mean that public schools cannot buy textbooks from private companies.

While the Dunleavy administration prepares to ask for a judicial stay to avoid irreparable harm to thousands of Alaskans, Democrats in the House and Senate appear to be coordinating with lawyer Kendall, who brought the lawsuit on behalf of the public education union.

The plaintiff side of the case is, in the words of one legislator, “the dog that caught the car.”

The 24,000 students are just the tip of the iceberg. There are tens of thousands of other parents and students who want to use correspondence programs and have not yet been able to organize their lives around this aspiration, but who hope to in the future.

Correspondence education in Alaska is not only widely practiced, it has been in place since at least 1898, when Gold Rush families conducted home schooling in the mining camp of Douglas, which was in the far flung district of Alaska, 14 years before the area was even a territory. In other words, correspondence education is part of the fabric of the entire state’s history, and many leaders in the state’s history got some or all of their education through private correspondence courses.

For example, in 1933, the 11th Alaska Legislature created the Board of Education, removed the public school system from the Territorial Board of Education, and delegated $8,000 for use of newly created “Division of High School Correspondence.”

Judge Zeman’s current term ends in February of 2025. Voters will get to decide this November if he should be retained as a judge past that date.

Read the history of homeschooling and correspondence education in Alaska in this timeline provided to the Alaska Legislature in 2011:

All of the court documents related to this case, to date, are at the following Court of Alaska links:

• Complaint dated 1/24/2023
• Motion to Intervene as Defendants dated 1/26/2023
• [Proposed] Answer and Affirmative and Defenses of Intervenor-Defendants to Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief dated 1/26/2023
• Defendant’s Non-Opposition to Motion to Intervene dated 2/3/2023
• Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss dated 3/8/2023
• Intervenors’ Statement of Non-opposition to Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss dated 3/17/2023
• Memorandum in Support of Plaintiffs’ Opposition to State of Alaska’s Motion to Dismiss/Cross Motion for Summary Judgment dated 4/28/2023
• Intervenors’ Response in Opposition to Plaintiffs’ Cross-motion for Summary Judgement dated 6/2/2023
• State’s Reply, Opposition, and Cross-Motion for Summary Judgment dated 6/2/2023
• Plaintiffs’ Reply in Support of Summary Judgment and Opposition to State of Alaska’s Cross-motion for Summary Judgmentdated 7/21/2023
• Intervenors’ Reply to Plaintiffs’ Response to Cross-motion for Summary Judgment dated 8/9/2023
• State’s Reply in Support of Cross-motion for Summary Judgment dated 8/9/2023
• Plaintiffs’ Notice of Supplemental Authority and Concession by Defendants dated 11/21/2023
• Defendant’s Response to Plaintiffs’ Notice of “”Supplemental Authority”” dated 11/29/2023
• Order Denying Motion to Dismiss and Granting Plaintiffs’ Motion for Summary Judgment dated 4/13/2024