Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Thursday announced he had vetoed a bill that would have boosted the basic per-student funding amount for public schools, the base student allocation, by $1,000. Instead, Dunleavy said he would introduce a $560 BSA increase, along with $35 million in targeted education funding, attached to a set of policies in a bill that he said he would introduce Friday.
"There were really two reasons for the veto," he said at a news conference. "One of the reasons is that the revenue situation has deteriorated a lot since we submitted the bills and worked off a budget in December, and the second reason for the veto is there's no policy in the bill."
The veto was widely expected. Dunleavy called the bill the House and Senate sent to his desk "a joke" after senators stripped out a variety of policy provisions that lawmakers previously included in the bill as an effort to seek compromise. Some policy measures — including an expansion of intra-district open enrollment and a ban on cellphones in schools — were items the governor favored.
Others stripped out by the Senate Finance Committee were items Dunleavy opposed, including a requirement that homeschooled students take a standardized test or alternative assessment to access state funding known as correspondence school allotments.
The leaders of the House and Senate say they plan to meet in joint session to attempt to override the veto on Tuesday afternoon.
“Our schools are in desperate need of this additional funding,” said Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage.
Given that the bill passed with a one-vote majority in each chamber, though, minority Rep. Will Stapp, R-Fairbanks, said he didn’t believe lawmakers would come close to the two-thirds majority necessary to override the governor’s veto.
“It would be very strange for me to see people who voted no on a bill to vote yes on an override of the bill,” he said.
Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak, said he, too, was skeptical the override would succeed.
“That’s not going to happen,” he said.
Lawmakers failed by one vote to override the governor’s veto of a compromise education bill last year that would have included a $680 boost to basic per-student funding while making numerous policy changes.
New bill would boost education funding — but there’s a catch
Dunleavy’s new bill, according to a draft provided to reporters, would provide $35 million in education funding in addition to the $560 base student allocation increase, including an increase in funding for homeschool students in correspondence schools and incentive payments to school districts tied to student performance on literacy assessments. The governor said that’s “equivalent” to a $700 increase in basic funding.
“The schools need more money. We had a huge spike in inflation just a couple years ago,” he said.
That’s been a chorus repeated by school districts, parents, community leaders and businesspeople for years, though lawmakers and the governor have failed to agree on a substantial boost to education funding since Dunleavy took office in 2018.
Debates over education funding, responding to those calls from Alaskans across the state, have dominated the last two legislative sessions. Dunleavy said Thursday that he was open to removing education funding as a perennial item of legislative debate.
“We should have a discussion about inflation-proofing education funding going forward, to be perfectly honest with you, and I would have that conversation,” Dunleavy said.
But it’s unclear whether the governor’s bill, if passed as is, would actually boost funding for schools across the state.
Schools this fiscal year got the equivalent of a $680 increase in basic funding on a one-time basis. It was entirely tied to total school district enrollment, rather than the approach the governor’s bill takes, tying some of the funding to reading performance and homeschool enrollment.
That means it’s possible the bill could result in some school districts — especially those with few homeschool students and poor scores in reading, or few young students — receiving less money next year than they did this year.
The new bill would also make a variety of changes to state law around charter schools and require school districts to “regulate” the use of cellphones in schools.
Lawmakers open to further negotiation with governor — if he’s willing
Key lawmakers say they’re open to continuing to work with Dunleavy on a compromise.
“There's a lot of ‘Yes, and…’ in what I heard today,” said House Education Committee Co-Chair Rebecca Himschoot, I-Sitka, who sponsored the bill the governor vetoed.
She said the governor’s new proposal was an improvement over the last education bill Dunleavy introduced, which did not include an increase in the base student allocation. Himschoot said she was especially encouraged by the governor’s apparent willingness to tie school funding to inflation. The original version of the education funding bill she filed would have tied school funding to the Consumer Price Index.
But Himschoot took issue with the fact that the governor’s bill provides less general-purpose funding than schools received last year.
“None of us is willing to go there,” she said.
Minority House Republicans said the governor’s bill provided a foundation to build upon.
“The bill looks like a pretty reasonable bill to me, with the permanent increase in education funding,” said Rep. Will Stapp, R-Fairbanks, a member of the all-Republican House minority. “If he says he's going to sign in, I don't see a reason why we wouldn't pass the bill at this moment.”
But key members of the Senate said they had reservations about some of the governor’s new proposals. Wielechowski, who chairs the powerful Senate Rules Committee, said he’s not sure the governor’s proposed policies will actually improve student performance.
“They really don't do anything at all to advance education,” Wielechowski said.
The governor’s office estimates the cost of the bill to be $179 million. Status quo funding for schools and other state services — slightly less than the funding Dunleavy proposes — would leave the state budget hundreds of millions of dollars in deficit.
Dunleavy suggested filling the gap with the state’s roughly $3 billion in savings, a prospect that has been dismissed by Senate leadership.
Wielechowski and Himschoot said they were frustrated by their experience negotiating with the governor’s staff, both this year and last. Himschoot, the primary sponsor of the bill the governor vetoed, said negotiations over the bill, the Legislature’s No. 1 priority, had run through the governor’s staff rather than Dunleavy himself.
“I’ve had no meetings with the governor,” she said.
Wielechowski said he hoped Dunleavy would be open to a little give-and-take.
“We worked last year and we thought we had a compromise. (We) gave the governor, quite frankly, 95% of what he asked for, and it still wasn't enough,” Wielechowski said. “If he's coming into this with the perspective of, ‘Give me everything, or we don't have a deal,’ that's probably not going to happen. I guarantee that's not going to happen.
“But if he's coming into this in a manner where he genuinely wants to compromise, then sure, absolutely we can find a deal,” he said.
KMXT’s Brian Venua contributed reporting.
