Alaska’s public schools likely won’t get all the money lawmakers approved in a bipartisan vote last month after Gov. Mike Dunleavy unilaterally reduced education funding with a line-item veto.
Dunleavy cut $50.6 million from formula funding for public schools, equivalent to $200 in basic per-student funding, known as the base student allocation, trimming back a $700 increase lawmakers approved last month.
Dunleavy also made other significant cuts to education spending approved by the Legislature: $5.7 million for early intervention and infant learning programs, $490,000 for teacher recruitment and $554,000 in incentives for teachers who receive a national certification.
Dunleavy also vetoed $25.1 million set aside for school maintenance and repairs, despite a KYUK, NPR and ProPublica investigation this year that found many rural schools in disrepair.
“The oil situation has deteriorated. The price of oil has gone down, therefore our revenue is going down, and, basically, we don't have enough money to pay for all of our obligations,” Dunleavy said in a video posted to social media.
The veto is essentially a funding cut for districts, since it’s a significant reduction from the $680 one-time base student allocation equivalent approved last year. School leaders across the state immediately condemned the veto.
“It is unprecedented. It is going to cause chaos in districts around the state,” said Kelly Lessens, the head of the Anchorage School Board’s Finance Committee. “It is going to require local school boards and superintendents to make some very hard decisions, really a few weeks from the start of the new fiscal year.”
The Anchorage School Board, anticipating the vetoes, scheduled a special meeting for 6:30 p.m. Thursday. Lessens estimated the board would have to find more than $4 million in cuts.
The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District will face even deeper cuts, Superintendent Clayton Holland said, since it budgeted for funding equivalent to what it received last year.
“We've already been, over the years, cutting and cutting away…It's across the board. And so we are having impacts that really are devastating to our communities,” he said.“I just worry what that's going to do to everyone — what that does for our students, what that does for the future of Alaska as people look to choose to have options elsewhere.”
Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak, said it was unlikely lawmakers would seek to quickly reconvene to attempt to override Dunleavy’s line-item veto, saying that it would be difficult to gather enough lawmakers in a special session to muster the three-quarters vote necessary to override a budget veto.
Stevens said he was disappointed by the cut, saying the budget lawmakers approved in May anticipated declines in revenue from oil and the federal government.
“It's not as if we don't have the money. We planned for it. We have the funds,” he said. “We came up with a good budget that could afford to … increase $700, and I’m sorry the governor has vetoed it down.”
Leaders of the Republican minorities in the state House and Senate did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson said Dunleavy had gone home to his family and was not available for an interview.
The veto of education funding is one of more than $128 million in general-purpose state spending reductions Dunleavy made using his line-item veto power, which allows him to reduce spending approved by the Legislature when signing the state budget into law.
But the school funding veto in particular is a blow to lawmakers’ top priority from this past legislative session. School districts across the state have pleaded with lawmakers and the governor to increase formula funding, saying they’ve been forced to slash their offerings for Alaska’s students.
Lawmakers increased the so-called base student allocation by $700, adding roughly $185 million to annual state education spending, by overriding Gov. Dunleavy’s veto of a bill that paired a funding increase with some policy reforms. The override vote was bipartisan, garnering support from 46 of the 60 members of the Alaska House and Senate.
It was the first substantial increase to the funding formula since 2017. Though lawmakers added nearly as much in one-time funding for education last year, school leaders continued to push lawmakers to boost the base student allocation, the amount in state law that directs how much districts receive on an ongoing basis, to eliminate uncertainty.
“When the veto override happened with the $700 going through, I think that was our burst of optimism,” said Holland, the Kenai superintendent. “Even though we knew that the governor would be looking to line-item veto, we thought … he'd reconsider and uphold what's in law right now.”
House Bill 57, the bill that increased the funding formula, also made a number of education policy changes — from restricting student cellphone use to easing charter school approval — most of which are unaffected by Dunleavy’s veto of education funding.
Dunleavy has vetoed education funding before — he cut a one-time funding increase approved by the Legislature in 2023 in half — but Thursday’s veto was the first time in recent memory, and perhaps longer, that the governor had reduced long-term funding specified by state law.
It’s the first time a governor has reduced the amount of funding schools receive since the state started using the current version of its funding formula in 1999.
Gov. Bill Walker, Dunleavy’s predecessor, twice vetoed basic education funding approved by the Legislature in the face of revenue shortfalls. But in both cases, the veto had no practical effect on the amount of money schools received from the state.
In 2015, when Walker issued wide-ranging line-item vetoes after the failure of a supermajority vote necessary to spend from savings, the Legislature, at Walker’s request, reconvened and restored education funding before the cuts took effect. A second veto in 2016 simply changed the source of funding, not the amount.
Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, suggested the veto could run afoul of the Alaska Constitution’s mandate that the state establish and maintain a public school system.
“There, I think, is a legitimate question about whether or not we are getting into that area where we are not following the constitutional and (state) Supreme Court mandate to adequately fund education. I think that's an open question at this point,” he said. “I wouldn't be surprised if there was a lawsuit.”
Correction: A photo caption in an earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the year the photo was taken. It was captured Jan. 28, 2025.
