State lawmakers are going back to the drawing board to try to come up with a school funding bill after failing Tuesday to override Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of a long-term boost to education funding.
House Bill 69 would have increased the so-called base student allocation by $1,000 per student. Alaska Public Media’s Eric Stone was in the House chamber for the override vote and has been talking with lawmakers and school leaders about what’s ahead, and he spoke with Alaska News Nightly host Casey Grove.
The following transcript has been edited for clarity.
Casey Grove: Eric, where do things go from here?
Eric Stone: Good question. So there is broad agreement that schools need more money, and not just on a one-time basis, as they've gotten in recent years. Even the governor is now saying so, and that is a change from a couple of months ago.
But at this point, I don't think anybody really knows where school funding is going to land.
CG: I guess with a month left in the session, that's not what really anybody wants to hear.
ES: No kidding. I talked with a bunch of school leaders on Friday, and they told me they are frustrated and confused by the back and forth between the legislature and Governor Mike Dunleavy.
A lot of their budgets were due a while ago, and they've basically just been sticking their fingers in the wind and taking a guess about where school funding is eventually going to land. In Anchorage, school board President Andy Holleman told me that they have no idea what to expect. So they're budgeting as if they'll get nothing above what's currently in the base student allocation — that's the BSA, the actual formula there in state law. Because there was one time funding last year, budgeting for no increase equates to about a 20% cut compared to this year.
"We have to present a balanced budget to our assembly in March, and we have to base it on something reasonable," Holleman said. "The BSA has always been funded, so we feel like we can use that."
I should say there that Holloman was speaking for himself, not the whole board. But this is true across the state. Folks are just flying blind, and in the meantime, hundreds of teachers around the state don't have contracts. They're basically just left twisting in the wind, waiting for the political process to play out.
CG: And where does that process stand now?
ES: OK, so House Bill 69 was the bill. Promises to boost school funding might be the primary reason Democrat-heavy bipartisan coalitions actually control the House and Senate after elections last year. Those folks would love to pass a bill that just has a funding increase in it.
Of course, that's not how Gov. Dunleavy sees it. He's insisted for years that funding increases be tied to specific policy items that he favors. Expanding charter schools has been a theme for the last two years, as has expanding correspondence homeschool. This year, he added incentive funding for literacy programs to that list. He says all of that would improve the state's test scores, which are kind of at the bottom of the nation.
Of course, the argument on the other side is that underfunded schools don't perform well, and that a funding boost would allow smaller class sizes, better long term planning, and thus higher scores.
Anyway, lawmakers and the governor hammered out something of a compromise. That's House Bill 69. But then a couple of weeks ago, things fell apart. Lawmakers took out all of the compromise policies and said they'd go ahead with a standalone $1,000 boost. Senator Bill Wielechowski — he's an anchorage Democrat in Senate leadership — says they thought at the time they might have a veto-proof majority.
"Before the initial vote occurred, and before Gov. Dunleavy came out and called it a joke, we thought there were 40 votes," Wielechowski said.
But then, they couldn't get all the votes, not even from their own majority caucuses. Two co-chairs of the Senate Finance Committee voted against the override. They said they were worried the state couldn't afford it — which, by the way, Governor Dunleavy also mentioned as a reason for vetoing it.
Even just continuing the current level of funding — a $680 boost to the base student allocation would be equivalent to that — would leave the state with hundreds of millions of dollars in budget deficits. And unlike the federal government, they actually have to balance the budget every year.
CG: So if lawmakers and the governor think $1,000 per kid is too expensive, how much can schools realistically expect?
ES: Well, the governor has proposed a $560 boost to the base student allocation. He pitched it as a $700 boost at first, but when you actually dig into the bill, it's $560, plus bonus funding for home school literacy programs.
Meanwhile, Senator Bert Stedman, a Sitka Republican in the majority who voted against the override, says he thinks folks should consider a $680 boost matching current funding the floor with additional increases in later years.
As for how they'll do it, which bill will pass, that part is more complicated. The governor's bill is on something of a fast track, skipping the usual education committee process and going straight to the House and Senate Finance Committees. It's unclear how they'll proceed with that.
But there are lots of bills moving through the legislative process related to education. There's a cellphone bill that just passed the House. Lawmakers could stuff a compromise package into that, if they come up with something that satisfies everyone.
In fact, just today, the Senate Finance Committee unveiled a new version of that cellphone bill. It adds a $700 base student allocation boost along with some transportation funding. Dunleavy immediately took to social media to call it inadequate. But you know, who knows? Maybe that one can get 40 votes and overcome a veto.
Just generally, what I'm hearing from lawmakers, though, is that they're skeptical of some elements of the governor's bill. Especially the open enrollment provision, where you can live in one district and go to school in another, and also some changes to the process that happens when a local school board wants to get rid of a charter school.
Senate President Gary Stevens, a Kodiak Republican. He says those are giving him some pause.
"There are some things that we're very concerned about, the policies the governor has included, you know, that we will continue to discuss with them. We'll try to find common ground. We'll see where it goes," Stevens said.
The school leaders that I talked to really want some sort of compromise that boosts funding in the long term. We will see whether that actually gets done.
If it doesn't, they'll probably do another year of one-time funding, and we'll come back and do this whole thing over again next year.
