Gov. Mike Dunleavy says he plans to roll out an education bill ahead of the legislative session that starts in January. He provided few details during a news conference ahead of his annual holiday open house, saying the legislation is still being drafted, but he sketched an outline.
"We're going to introduce a bill on education and education funding that we believe will be comprehensive," Dunleavy said. "It'll be a combination of increased funding and, again, outcomes, like we discussed last year with our charter schools, correspondence schools, neighborhood schools, et cetera."
Public school advocates have complained for years about underfunding. The largest portion of the state’s funding formula, the base student allocation, has been essentially flat since 2017, with the exception of a 0.5% increase in 2022. Instead, lawmakers have provided one-year funding boosts. But school districts say those often come too late, after they’ve already temporarily laid off staff. Some teachers and staff take other jobs while waiting for school funding to materialize.
Last session, Dunleavy vetoed a bill that would have increased public school funding by 11%. He said the bill didn’t do enough to boost charter schools, retain teachers or hold schools accountable for poor performance.
To address those concerns, he called on the Legislature to pass two policy proposals. One would have created a new approval pathway for charter schools, allowing them to apply directly to the state rather than a local school district. The other would have created yearly retention bonuses for teachers of up to $15,000 per year. Both of the proposals faced skepticism in the House and Senate and failed to advance.
Dunleavy says he expects the forthcoming bill would be similar, with some additions. He said a poll his office commissioned this past spring shows that Alaskans do want education funding to increase — but they also want reforms.
"The people said in the poll that it should be funded. Well, yes, but they also said that they expect different outcomes and approaches to education," Dunleavy said. "What we're trying to do is bring those two sides together in this bill."
Dunleavy says expanding energy production and transmission is another key priority for the upcoming session, including both fossil fuels and renewables.
"No matter who you talk to anywhere on the planet, everyone agrees we're going to need probably two to three times as much energy as we're producing right now," he said. He said he expected to see more work on renewables and electrical transmission lines during the session.
Dunleavy says he also plans to ask lawmakers to “back us up” on an updated engineering study of a long-planned natural gas pipeline from the North Slope. The state entity working towards a gas pipeline recently obtained a $50 million letter of credit from the state’s industrial development agency to backstop front-end engineering design.
The Alaska Gasline Development Corporation says that’s the last step before the private companies who would construct the pipeline can make a final decision on whether to invest in the project.
The gasline project has long faced skepticism over its projected cost, but Dunleavy says Donald Trump’s return to the White House provides reason for optimism.
"I was one of the skeptics, but I do feel pretty good as to where it's going," Dunleavy said.
During the news conference, Dunleavy also addressed a hastily scheduled, then canceled, late-night announcement alongside Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom the week after the election. Commenters speculated at the time that the livestream would announce that Dunleavy was leaving the governorship for a post in the Trump administration.
Dunleavy said Tuesday that he had planned to congratulate Nick Begich III on his victory in the U.S. House race, but canceled the livestream when it became clear that the race was still too close to call.
"We thought we were going to have numbers on the election, on the Begich and Peltola race, that evening that would have basically said that it's going to be called," he said. "That didn't happen."
Dunleavy ultimately did not issue a public video message congratulating Begich on his win, even after the race was called shortly before Thanksgiving. He told a conservative radio host last month that he planned to serve out the remaining two years of his term as governor.
