Bob Griffin, one of the most vigorous supporters of students and teachers in Alaska, was not confirmed by a joint session of the Alaska House and Senate on Tuesday for another term on the Alaska Board of Education and Early Development. The vote was 21-yes, 39-no, and included several Republicans who voted against the governor’s nominee.
Griffin, who is also on the board of directors of the conservative Alaska Policy Forum, which has a record of supporting good education policy in the Legislature, has been a strong advocate for accountability in the largely unaccountable school system in Alaska.
For nearly a decade, he advocated for the Alaska Reads Act, and he’s written op-eds in favor of charter schools and other educational pathways. He disagrees with a lower court decision recently that stripped state funding from correspondence students. He encouraged legislators to not override the governor’s veto of a flawed funding bill this year.
During the joint session on Tuesday, Griffin was attacked with special animosity by Democrat Sen. Loki Tobin of Anchorage, who accused him of an inventory of faults, some of them patently false, such as accusing him of once representing himself as a member of the Department of Education and Early Development, something that didn’t happen. What happened an error in the minutes of a meeting, as was pointed out later by one of Griffin’s defenders.
She also accused him of saying that “women can’t dunk.” That also didn’t happen. Griffin had once stated, in the context of defending girls in sports from transgender takeover, that the number of dunks in the WNBA were less than the dunks by one game in the NBA. (In the 27 WNBA history, there are 33 recorded dunks by just 8 individual women. By comparison, since the 2000-2001 season, there have been 169,734 dunks made in the NBA.)
Tobin then accused him of trying to strip funding from schools. In fact, he has advocated for accountability and better use of funding, and he has shown how Alaska schools are some of the top-funded in the nation.
Griffin was not sulking about the votes against him or the surly disparagements of his record by those who support the position of the National Education Association, which is demanding permanent annual increases in school funding, without accompanying accountability.
“I was a fighter pilot for 22 and have had my a– chewed by better people than those,” he said.
In the Legislature, Republicans usually support a Republican governor and Democrats usually support a Democrat governor.
In a rarely witnessed show of disloyalty, however, several Republicans in the Democrat-dominated Senate turned on Gov. Dunleavy by voting against Griffin’s confirmation. They included: Sen. Cathy Giessel, Sen. Jesse Bjorkman, Sen. Click Bishop, Sen. Kelly Merrick, Sen. Bert Stedman and Sen. Gary Stevens.
On the House side, five Republicans also turned their backs on the governor with their votes, including Rep. Julie Coulombe, Rep. Will Stapp, Rep. Louise Stutes, Rep. Jesse Sumner, and Rep. Stanley Wright.
Griffin said, “This is not going to slow me down, but will give me more time and opportunity to advocate for reform. It actually buoys my spirit that I’m a lightning rod, because that means I’ve been effective. I was the one who encouraged the introduction of the Alaska Reads Act three times before it was picked up by Gov. Dunleavy and [former] Sen. Tom Begich, and passed by one vote in 2022. I will be working tirelessly to get more education reforms, which we desperately need in Alaska,” he said.
“I served my five years on the board knowing it was unlikely I would be able to serve another five years,” Griffin said. “I can’t change who I am in order to maintain a title.”
The nomination of Barbara Tyndall of Fairbanks to the state Board of Education was next on the agenda of the joint session. She fared better. Although criticized by Democrats for being a Christian, in the end, Tyndall was confirmed on a vote of 34-26.
