Two school districts have filed a lawsuit challenging the state of Alaska for failing to fulfill its constitutional duty to adequately fund public education.

The Fairbanks North Star Borough School District and the Kuspuk School District filed the in Anchorage Superior Court on Tuesday, naming the Alaska Department of Early Education and Development, Deena Bishop as its commissioner, and Gov. Mike Dunleavy as defendants.

Plaintiffs say the state’s funding is “woefully insufficient,” resulting in a loss of teachers, overcrowded classrooms, deteriorating schools, and loss of learning and opportunities for students. They’re asking the court for a declaration that the state is violating its obligations under the Alaska Constitution, and to remedy the violation by funding education.

A spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Law said education funding decisions should be determined by the Legislature, rather than the courts.

“The state has to be accountable for ensuring that they have established, and they have maintained a system of education within the state,” said Madeline Aguillard, superintendent of the Kuspuk School District. “Because by all evidence from Kuspuk, I believe it’s not being maintained.”

Aguillard spoke by phone Wednesday, as she was managing the evacuation of around 50 students from the Aniak Jr. Sr. High School due to a roof failure earlier this week.

It’s one of many severe school facilities issues facing the Kuspuk School District, and . The estimated cost of deferred maintenance is over $400 million in the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District, the other plaintiff in the case, said Luke Meinert, its superintendent. That is all while grappling with budget shortfalls, difficulty maintaining teachers and growing class sizes, he said.

“Fairbanks has experienced seven school closures within the last five years,” Meinert said. “With declining revenue from the state and drops in enrollment here locally, that was one of the levers that our Board of Education was forced to pull to balance our budgets in past years.”

“Those school closures have created a tremendous amount of instability within the community and within our families,” he said.

Spokespeople for the office of Gov. Mike Dunleavy and the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development declined to comment on the lawsuit, and referred questions to the Alaska Department of Law. Sam Curtis, a spokesperson for the department said education policy and funding decisions should be resolved by state lawmakers.

“Litigating this issue would primarily enrich counsel by asking the judiciary to referee budgetary judgments the Constitution assigns to the political branches. Again, the responsible path is legislation—not litigation,” Curtis said by email on Tuesday.

“Although we have not been served with this lawsuit and have not yet had an opportunity to review the claims, the Alaska Constitution does not prescribe a dollar amount for education funding,” he said. “To the contrary, it vests the power of the purse squarely in the Legislature and the Governor.”

Education funding has been an embattled political issue for years, and lawmakers approved an increase to per student funding, known as the base student allocation or BSA, last year — which was vetoed twice by the governor, and then restored in

But plaintiffs say state funding is at a level that fails to provide students with “a sound basic education and meaningful opportunity for proficiency,” and lags far behind operating costs. The BSA has increased by only 2.2% since 2015, according to the lawsuit, while estimated cost of inflation has risen by 37%.

“Every year, it’s based on, ‘Well, this is what we can afford,’ versus ‘We absolutely have to find the funds to deal with this,’” said Caroline Storm, executive director of the non-profit education advocacy group, Coalition for Education Equity which is helping organize the lawsuit.

In addition to the court order, plaintiffs are asking the court to require the state to conduct an adequacy study. The lawsuit alleges the state has never conducted a study of funding levels, calling it a “dereliction of constitutional obligation” because it hasn’t scientifically evaluated if the current funding levels are adequate.

The study they’re asking for would assess the actual cost of delivering education — including teachers, special education, transportation and maintaining school facilities — to compare to current funding levels and identify the gaps.

Plaintiffs cite low test scores as evidence of inadequate funding

The lawsuit asserts the current system is failing “a vast majority of the state’s school age children,” as evidenced by low proficiency in statewide assessments. The plaintiffs say that’s particularly true for rural, low-income and high-need communities.

Last year, just over 67% of Alaska students did not meet grade level requirements for English language arts, nearly 68% failed to meet requirements for math and 62% did not meet requirements for science, according to the lawsuit.

In the Kuspuk School District for the 2024 to 2025 school year, those numbers jumped to 93 to 97% of students who were not meeting grade level requirements in those core subjects. In the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District, more than half of students were not meeting those grade level requirements last year.

“The state has failed and refused to fund education at a level that allows the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District and the Kuspuk School District to provide instruction in core subjects, much less provide instruction in those subjects to state-adopted standards,” the lawsuit said.

Districts grapple with teacher shortage, school building maintenance

The Fairbanks district has lost 300 teachers and staff since 2019, according to the lawsuit, and the Kuspuk School District’s teacher shortage has resulted in cuts to all after school programs, arts programs, career and technical education and social studies programs.

More and more students are having to take classes online in the Kuspuk district, Aguillard said. “They come to the physical building, and we facilitate and monitor, and we try our best to be able to do that. But it’s not the education our families and our students are desiring or deserve,” she said.

The Aniak community is now facing the total loss of a school building and gymnasium due to a roof failure.

This week, the roof of the gymnasium, also connected to classrooms and administrative offices was audibly heard cracking and breaking apart. Around 50 students are now displaced.

“Basically it’s opening like a flower,” Aguillard said, due to the foundation shifting. “The engineer immediately was like, ‘You have to get people out of here.’ It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when it’s going to finish collapsing.”

Students from pre-K to 12th grade are joining the community’s other elementary school while the district searches for alternative space to conduct classes and move administration offices, Aguillard said. She said the goal is to conduct a controlled demolition before the total collapse of the building. “It’s completely split, pulling off from the building, and then there’s a split where the buildings are connected together, the old and the new pieces,” she said.

Catastrophic school building failure is not new for the region. The district requested repairs to the school in Sleetmute , leading to continued deterioration and unsafe conditions for students.

Aguillard pointed out that as a rural district, a Regional Education Attendance Area, known as an REAA, Kuspuk has no local funding from municipalities so it relies entirely on state funding. “And so the BSA, the foundation formula, has to go to all operational needs to ensure that our students are receiving an adequate education,” she said.

The superintendents and Storm acknowledged that state budgets are constrained, and legislators are faced with many competing priorities and political battles around new state revenues.

But Storm said the hope is the lawsuit will also send a message to lawmakers to take bolder action to increase funding for Alaska education.

“I think some direction from a court saying ‘You are chronically underfunding our schools,’ gives enough legislators cover to address the revenue issue, among other things, and make some hard votes, because now there’s a court system saying you need to rectify this problem,” she said.

Meinert emphasized the importance of Alaska education among other state issues. “I can’t think of a better investment in our state than in the children,” he said. “They are our future, and they will dictate the success of the future of this state.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Claire Stremple for questions: info@alaskabeacon.com.

The Alaska Legislature, meeting in special session, has overridden Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of more than $50 million in public school funding.

The vote was 45-14. At least 45 of 60 legislators are needed to override an Alaska governor’s budget veto.

The override eliminates a 5.6% year-over-year cut to public school funding, leaving districts with a small funding increase. Since July 1, the start of the state’s fiscal year, oil prices have significantly exceeded the state’s spring forecast, and if that trend continues, the state would have more than enough revenue to pay for the revived spending.

It’s the first time since 1987 that Alaska lawmakers have overridden an appropriations veto by a sitting governor.

“This is a remarkable day,” said Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak. “It was quite eventful and really unprecedented in my experience in the Legislature, and I’m very proud of how the House and Senate worked together and how we stood up and did the right thing.”

Lawmakers also voted to override Dunleavy’s veto of , a measure that would require the Alaska Department of Revenue to provide lawmakers with a report on oil tax settlements. Sen Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, has said that could reveal the state has been settling tax disputes for much less than their stated value.

The vote on that override was 43-16. Forty votes were needed for that override because it was a policy bill and not one involving appropriations.

Sen. Mike Shower, R-Wasilla, was excused absent from both votes.

Legislators declined to accept an executive order from Dunleavy that sought to create an Alaska Department of Agriculture, calling the order unconstitutional. The governor disputes that assessment, and the issue could be headed to the courts.

Governor and legislators have different perspectives on fixing state schools

School district superintendents said before Saturday’s education vote that if lawmakers were able to override the governor, school districts would be able to .

Dunleavy called the special session in order to pressure lawmakers into considering a variety of education policies intended to increase the availability of alternatives to traditional public schools.

Alaska on a national standardized test intended to rate states’ public education performance.

“There’s 50 states, and we’re 51st in the nation. It’s a moral imperative to fix that,” he said.

Legislators approved some policies this spring when they approved a compromise bill that also raised the core of the state’s per-student funding formula, the base student allocation.

Dunleavy called that bill inadequate and vetoed it. Lawmakers overrode that veto.

Dunleavy then vetoed funding needed to pay for the increased formula, and he called a special session for Aug. 2, at a time when some lawmakers were thought to be unavailable, forcing an early vote on a possible override and increasing the odds that his veto would stand.

A successful veto could have forced lawmakers into further compromises with the governor on policies they have previously opposed.

Instead, legislators made extraordinary efforts to attend the special session. Sen. Forrest Dunbar, D-Anchorage, obtained special leave from military service in Europe. Sen. James Kaufman, R-Anchorage, flew to Juneau from Vietnam. Other lawmakers canceled family events and postponed trips for business and to the National Conference of State Legislatures..

As late as Saturday morning, no one in the Capitol was sure whether the governor’s veto would be overridden or sustained.

“We actually thought we were going to be short,” said Senate Majority Leader Cathy Giessel, R-Anchorage.

In the end, the veto was overridden by the exact tally needed.

Dunleavy said afterward that he doesn’t think it was a mistake to call the special session.

“This gives the people of Alaska a chance to see where people stand on these votes,” he said.

He said that policy changes and education funding represent two sides of a coin, and without both halves, “it’s not much of a currency.”

The vote also allows Alaskans to see whether legislators are serious about addressing policy changes now, he said. The special session is open for 30 days, and legislators could meet and discuss the issues.

Legislators have created an education task force to address policy, but that group isn’t expected to meet until Aug. 25 and will work on its own schedule outside of special session.

“The bottom line is they either act or they don’t. This is like the world capital of talk, this place is, in Juneau,” Dunleavy said.

House Minority Leader Mia Costello, R-Anchorage, was the only legislator to vote in favor of but changed her vote against Saturday’s override.

She said afterward that she thought the prior bill had good policies — a partial ban on cellphones in public schools, for one — and she wanted to see more policy work.

Sen. Shelley Hughes, R-Palmer and a candidate for governor in next year’s elections, also voted against the override, noting that legislation proposed by Dunleavy for the special session actually included funding increases that were greater than the amount vetoed from the budget.

But those comments didn’t represent the views of a majority of lawmakers, who said after the vote that they were concerned about the direct and indirect impacts of the governor’s veto within their district.

Ahead of the vote, Rep. Jeremy Bynum, R-Ketchikan, said that sustaining the veto would encourage local governments to make up the funding gap by increasing their local contribution, increasing the burden on local property taxpayers. Bynum, who voted in favor of May’s veto override, also voted in favor of an override on Saturday.

The House and Senate adjourned their joint session immediately after considering both vetoes and lawmakers were greeted by applause from pro-override protesters who demonstrated in the Capitol’s hallways and outside the building before the vote.

The special session will technically stay ongoing, but legislators said they do not expect to meet again before Aug. 19.

Special session started late because of lawmaker’s missed flight

Saturday’s special session was scheduled to begin at 10 a.m., with the House and Senate meeting together at 10:15 a.m., but the joint session didn’t start until 1:31 p.m. because Rep. Robyn Burke, D-Utqiagvik, missed the morning flight from Anchorage to Juneau.

Burke said her mistake was partially due to a family member’s surgery, which ran late into the night before the flight.

The delay caused some members of the House Republican minority caucus to razz members of the majority, of which Burke is a member. The minority Republicans noted that they were present and ready to work on time, and the majority was not.

Dunleavy from the first five days of the special session in order to improve the odds that his vetoes would be sustained. When it comes to overriding a veto, an absent lawmaker is equivalent to one voting no.

Members of the majority called that request dirty politics, and Dunleavy later changed his position, asking lawmakers to be ready to hold committee hearings on Sunday. Republican lawmakers who had promised to stay away from the special session also changed their positions and chose to attend.

On Friday, Rep. Sara Hannan, D-Juneau, wheeled a wagon full of fresh peonies through the Capitol for staff and legislators. The flowers came from in Fairbanks, she said, because its owner had heard that the governor was encouraging lawmakers to stay away from the special session, and the flower-grower wanted to thank legislators for showing up.

Before lawmakers convened, Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom walked through the Capitol’s second floor.

“What’s the energy of today?” asked Rep. Calvin Schrage, I-Anchorage, of Dahlstrom.

“It’s electric, it’s electric,” she said.

Around them, lawmakers and staff maneuvered through a hallway lined with sign-carrying protesters urging an override. Behind them, in the Capitol’s stairway, Department of Education commissioner Deena Bishop walked downstairs from the third floor, home to the office of the governor. Next to her was Jordan Shilling, the governor’s legislative director, with his ear to a cellphone.

According to compiled by the Legislative Affairs Agency, Saturday’s vote marked the first time since 2009 that lawmakers have overridden an appropriations veto.

That override involved an action by Gov. Sarah Palin, who had left office by the time of the override. Lawmakers haven’t overridden an appropriations veto by a sitting governor since Gov. Steve Cowper in 1987, according to the LAA list.

Legislature and governor disagree on Department of Agriculture

As the session opened, Dunleavy of an executive order creating a cabinet-level Alaska Department of Agriculture.

Lawmakers rejected the governor’s first executive order and introduced broader legislation instead.

The presiding officers of the House and Senate responded to the second order with , saying that the governor’s order is unconstitutional and that they will not accept it.

“I’ve talked to him about it, told him about a couple days ago, and I think he can do whatever he wants, but if it’s pretty clear that we’re on good legal standing not to deal with it in this session,” said Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak.

Hours later, the governor saying that he believes the Legislature must vote to disapprove his order. Barring that vote, “I will treat this attempt by the Legislature to circumvent the constitutionally mandated process to be legally ineffective. Unless the Legislature convenes in a joint session to disapprove the Executive Order … I will consider it to have become law at the close of the special session and proceed accordingly.”

Giessel and other members of the House and Senate said afterward that they don’t know whether the issue will be resolved in the courts, but they feel that the topic is better addressed through legislation, and a bill has already received three hearings in the Senate Resources Committee.

School officials and education advocates react to veto override

Before the education veto override, dozens of people rallied outside the Capitol and in the building’s hallways, pleading with legislators to vote yes.

Following the override vote, demonstrators clapped and cheered, thanking lawmakers as they left the joint session.

Several district officials reacted Saturday afternoon with thanks to legislators and applauded the override vote.

“We’re extremely excited. A lot of our administrators were texting and very excited about getting it overturned today, so that made Valdez very happy,” said that city’s school superintendent, Jason Weber, by phone on Saturday. He said the funding will go toward previously cut positions, like an elementary school math specialist, as determined by the school board.

Fairbanks North Star Borough School District Superintendent Luke Meinert congratulated lawmakers by phone on Saturday.

“It’s been a long time coming that we haven’t had adequate funding, and this is one step forward providing stability for our public schools. So just a huge thank you to them,” Meinert said.

He said funds will go to support classrooms, reduce class sizes, and restore some previous cuts, but because the money is arriving so close to the start of the school year, changes will come at the last minute.

“With the class size discussion, it is a tough time of year to hire teachers, given our school starts here in a couple weeks. So we’ll see what we’re going to do with it, but it definitely helps stabilize our funding for the school year. We’re also underfunded in transportation … and so that might be one place that it’s able to help us.”

Officials with the Anchorage School District, the state’s largest by student population serving over 43,000 students, also thanked legislators. “The Anchorage School District is grateful to the 45 lawmakers who voted to put students first,” said MJ Thim, the district’s chief of communications, in an emailed statement.

“Restoring $50 million in public school funding means more stability in classrooms, more certainty for families, and stronger support for educators working every day to help students succeed. This funding was already approved with broad legislative support. Overriding the veto ensures that commitment is honored.”

NEA-Alaska, the state’s largest teachers union, expressed support for the education veto override.

“Every dollar invested in public education helps an Alaska student learn. Helps find their passion for science, math, reading, and the arts. Helps keep the lights on and schools warm. And helps our phenomenal Alaska educators successfully do their job,” said NEA-Alaska President Laura Capelle, in a written statement. “This funding is a step in the right direction, but it is not yet enough. We must continue to invest — in real dollars and collaborative solutions — to support the highest quality public education in Alaska.”

Education funding advocate Caroline Storm, said she was uncertain about the outcome of the vote, but happy with the override.

“I knew it was going to be very close,” said Storm, who is executive director of the nonprofit Coalition for Education Equity. “I was disappointed to see that (Rep. Mia) Costello flipped her vote, and I’m grateful to see that (Rep. David) Nelson did not. So those were two people we were concerned about.”

Other bills not taken up

After the joint session, the House and Senate passed resolutions that permit them to keep the special session open without additional meetings.

That likely means that several other Dunleavy vetoes will stand. The governor , including money for school maintenance and for . Legislators did not take up those vetoes.

Legislators also did not vote on bills pertaining to , , , and .

Stevens said that after lawmakers had two successful overrides, “we were pleased that we got those two through, and there was some question about the others.”

House Majority Leader Chuck Kopp, R-Anchorage, said lawmakers saw an “overwhelming” amount of consensus on the two successful overrides, and there wasn’t the same consensus on the others, even though they were discussed.

Dunbar was the sponsor of the payday loan bill.

“I didn’t believe the votes were there this time, and I felt that a failed veto override would diminish the chance that the bill would pass in the future, particularly because it should be a bipartisan, uncontroversial bill,” Dunbar said, “and I think we can revisit it in a year or two when the advocates have had a chance to better explain some of the specifics.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: info@alaskabeacon.com.

Federal funds for adult education services were among those blocked by the Trump administration on July 1, causing immediate cuts to Alaska adult education and workforce development programs and staff layoffs.

The U.S. Department of Education has more than $6 billion in congressionally approved grants for education, including over $629 million for adult education basic grants, and more than $85 million in adult integrated English literacy and civics education grants. The administration has said that it’s withholding the federal funding to review the grant programs to ensure they

Adult education can range from classes that help adults learn basic literacy to programs that assist students in gaining certificates equivalent to high school diplomas, and can teach skills that are essential to performing certain jobs.

Alaska had over $1.1 million as part of an adult education basic grant, according to the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development, which administers the grants. A department spokesperson said on Tuesday the grant amounts for English literacy and civics education this year were not available, but the state received more than $99,600 last year.

The withheld funds means immediate cuts to services for Alaska adult learners and staff layoffs, according to grant recipients.

“We were definitely blindsided,” said Lucie Magrath, executive director of the Literacy Council of Alaska, a Fairbanks-based nonprofit that provides adult education programs, including adult literacy, English language learning, civics and General Educational Development, or GED, preparation classes.

Magrath said an estimated $180,000 in federal funding, or over half of their budget, was impounded, causing immediate cuts to services and staff layoffs. While the organization did not identify the number of layoffs in an interview last week, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner that there were five layoffs.

“So we are having to make some pretty drastic decisions with staffing and programming,” she said in a phone interview on Thursday. “We likely will not be able to serve nearly as many people this year, and we’re making staffing cuts right now.”

The organization provides in-person and virtual instruction and mentoring to adult learners in Fairbanks, as well as in villages in the Interior and Western Alaska, stretching from the Yukon Flats to the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.

They also have a workforce development program, the Pathways Program, serving youths and young adults ages 16 to 24, and run the used bookstore in Fairbanks, which provides revenues for its programs, jobs training and employment.

Shelby Cooke is the assistant executive director of the Literacy Council of Alaska, and said it’s difficult to fill such a large funding gap, especially on such short notice, and Alaskans will be impacted.

“The real detriment is to our students and Alaskans who need that GED credential to go to work, or maybe they’re a super-skilled person in their native tongue, but they need enough English to be able to navigate a job interview,” she said. “Those are the folks that are suffering, and in turn, our economy suffers too.”

Magrath said some programs will be suspended immediately. It’s possible that these suspensions will be temporary, as her organization figures out its next steps. “We’re looking at restructuring some of our programs just to be able to use the resources that we have to the maximum impact for our community and our students,” she said. “So we have a lot to figure out right now.”

Southeast Regional Resource Center, a nonprofit educational services agency that provides a variety of services statewide, including adult education, English language learning and workforce development programs. In addition, SERRC provides educational and business services to school districts, including special education programs, human resources and grant administration.

“We do have some state funds, and so we’ve had to modify our budget just off what we know we have for funding — for state funds — and we are looking at having to reduce our staffing,” said Chris Reitan, its executive director, in a phone interview Thursday. He said the organization is looking at cutting at least two staff positions and a few part-time positions. “So we are concerned about the ability to have the same level of impact.”

Reitan said the federal funding freeze withheld over $86,600 for adult education programs in Southeast Alaska, and over $64,000 in the Aleutians region.

He said SERRC’s program served 112 students last year in the areas of GED support, English language learning and workforce development across the state.

“Number one, adult education provides a kind of a lifeline for Alaskans seeking to improve their lives, and it also helps strengthen our state’s workforce,” he said, and will have an immediate impact on adult learners, “which then could immediately impact their ability in regards to getting good-paying jobs, their ability to provide for their families, their ability to contribute to their local communities.”

He added: “I see this as being a significant impact across the state, in regards to our citizens being able to have the opportunity to better themselves.”

SERRC and the Literacy Council of Alaska are two of across the state with grant funding administered by the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development. A department spokesperson, Adam Weinert, said by email that the department has continued to award available state matching funds for the programs, totaling more than $1.9 million.

“Sub-grantees were informed that we were moving forward at this time with state funding only,”  Weinert said of the programs. “Once federal funding is released, we will move forward with a budget modification to provide for the federal funding.”

The full impact of how the freeze will affect some programs in the long term remains unclear.

The University of Alaska system has several adult education programs, funded in part by federal funds, as well as state and local funding. Jonathan Taylor, the university’s director of communications, said by email Monday that “discussions are ongoing” around funding but those programs are scheduled to continue.

Taylor said at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the program will start up in August with funding from Bristol Bay Economic Development Corp.

Within the University of Alaska Anchorage, there are adult education programs at , serving the Kodiak Island Borough; , serving the Soldotna, Homer and Seward regions; and , serving the Valdez, Cordova and Copper Basin regions.

“We have received assurances that all three will receive some sort of funding this year,” Taylor said. “To our knowledge, the state will initiate these awards using either state funding or federal funding it has access to. If additional Federal Funds become available, the state will amend the agreements to make up to the original intended funding amount. Currently, this is an active endeavor and ongoing discussion with the state.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: info@alaskabeacon.com.

“I had nothing, no resources,” Defreese said. “I built the curriculum from scratch.” 

Though Defreese was the lead teacher in her 11th- and 12th-grade English classes — designing and delivering lessons, grading student work and offering feedback — she was not operating alone. Technically, she was still an apprentice. Her first year in Beech Grove was part of a partnership with local Marian University, a residency program where she’d agreed to be the “teacher of record” at the school while still receiving training and taking courses to earn her master’s degree in teaching. 

During her first year, Defreese had both a mentor teacher at the high school plus professors at Marian providing her with ongoing coaching and training.

Marian professors said the design of the program, which began in 2019, was intended to increase the skill set of new teachers by exposing them to the research on learning, but also to get teachers “on their feet” and into classrooms sooner. “We have a teacher shortage,” said Karen Wright, director of residencies and clinical experiences at Klipsch Educators College at Marian. The one-year residency, she said, “gives an opportunity for us to truly partner with our community as well as fully train our candidates.”

It covers the $21,000 tuition for a new teacher’s master’s degree, plus provides a living stipend that ranges from $18,000 to $39,000, depending on teacher qualifications.

Local schools and the university see the arrangement as a win/win: understaffed schools get qualified teachers into classrooms quickly, and new teachers get ongoing coaching and support to hone their skills.

Marian University is one of a growing number of programs overhauling how teachers get trained, moving away from short, uneven practical experiences in classrooms to something more closely resembling a medical residency. Residents do more of the day-to-day work of a licensed teacher but in a more junior position, under the supervision of more experienced teachers. 

Apprentice teachers take education courses at night and on weekends while spending their days working directly with students, through tutoring and academic intervention as well as full-time teaching. And unlike traditional programs, apprentice teachers often get paid for their time.

Though the number of residency, apprenticeship and mentorship programs is hard to quantify, experts say the model is not just in university programs, but in non-traditional, alternative certification and “” programs as well. 

Program leaders say longer residencies are happening in part due to the profession’s rising demands and changes in the field. Some residency programs focus on specific targets, like equipping teachers with the research— such as on the science of reading —  to understand how learning works; others look to create a more diverse workforce or address chronic teacher shortages. 

The apprenticeship model has promise, said Suzanne Donovan, executive director of the incubated at the National Research Council. Programs like SERP — the Strategic Education Research Partnership — are looking to add a research element to new teacher residency programs, making early teaching look much more like young doctors training in a research hospital.

“I’m convinced it’s the thing that could make education a system that continuously improves in the way that,” she said. 

New teachers now outnumber any other group

improving student teaching is one of the most efficient ways to strengthen student achievement and teacher retention overall. Over the last 30 years, novice and first-year teachers have grown to make up the of the workforce, researchers say, outnumbering teachers who’ve worked for five, 10 or any other number of years or more.

According to a 2017 analysis, about 7% of all teachers, or 245,000 out of 3.5 million, are either first-year or novice teachers. In 1987, by contrast, those just entering the field made up 3% of the teacher workforce. 

Since new teachers tend to be less effective than experienced ones, and leave in higher numbers, especially the that work in high-poverty schools, the student teaching experience becomes critical to success. Teachers in training who have positive student teaching experiences with effective, experienced mentor teachers to teach. 

But according to a 2023 report from EdResearch for Action, many state regulations come up short, offering bare minimum requirements ranging in quality. Only 27 states require at least 10 weeks of student teaching under a mentor teacher in the building; even fewer, the report says, mandate a student teacher work full-time during those weeks. Few programs set criteria for what student teaching should include. Mentor teachers often receive , and if they are paid at all, receive an average $200 to $250 stipend. 

 “The frequency and quality of support provided to teacher candidates by mentor teachers and field instructors vary significantly and are often inadequate,” researchers wrote.

“People are not paying enough attention to this issue,” Dan Goldhaber, director of the at the American Institutes for Research, told �鶹��Ʒ. “There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit when it comes to making student teaching better.” 

Studies have shown, for example, that a for novice teachers reduced teacher attrition within the first few years. 

�ҴDZ���󲹲����’s links mentor teacher quality to how effective new teachers are once they get in front of students. While only about 5% of working teachers volunteer to be mentors, student teachers who do get highly effective mentor teachers perform substantially better once they’re in classrooms. 

“If you work with a very effective, two-standard-deviations-above-average mentor teacher, you end up looking almost like a teacher who has two years of teaching experience instead of a novice,” Goldhaber said.

But several obstacles stand in the way of higher quality training for novices, said Matthew Kraft, an education economist at Brown University. Teacher compensation continues to be a factor, and districts and universities can’t pay for long training periods like in medicine. No such thing exists for educators. 

“It’s alluring to characterize teaching as medicine, but we’re not going to have anything close to that until we have something that even approaches medical pay,” Kraft said. “Those things go together. You train many, many years to become a doctor, not only because it’s necessary, but because there are returns to that multi-year investment in your education.” 

Getting into the nitty-gritty of teaching 

Some new residency and apprenticeship programs are paying more attention to breaking down the steps of teaching. They’re spending more time on research and practical tools in the way new doctors practice the “how” while learning the “why” of treating patients. 

When professors overhauled the student teaching program at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, in 2020, school of education dean Douglas Cost said they needed better measures to know whether their clinical teacher training was doing a good job preparing teachers for the classroom. Teacher licensure was the bare minimum.

“Accreditation is an important goal,” Cost said. “But it doesn’t get into the nitty-gritty of teaching. Understanding the science behind learning has given us a real lever to begin thinking about what makes a good teacher.”  

Cost and colleagues adopted , an evidence-based educator curriculum focused on improving student learning. It gives new teachers specific techniques like connecting students’ prior knowledge to what they’re learning, or how to make sure all students are thinking about the material. 

“Our professors gave us a template for designing our lesson plans, based on prior knowledge, gaps in knowledge, how to get students up to speed who might have gaps,” said Sarah Cardoza, a former resident and social studies teacher at Wasilla High School in Wasilla, Alaska. “What do you want students to know, and how do you know if they know it? It takes that simple concept and gives you a roadmap for it.” 

Cardoza said her first year as a resident teacher, her class had eight students with mandated special education support, three English language learners and several Ukrainian refugees  — a lot for a new teacher to handle. 

“I appreciated having a plan for how you are going to handle those situations when everybody’s needs are so different,” she said.

New teachers often don’t have the experience to know how to execute these techniques in a classroom full of students, said Zach Groshell, an independent coach and teacher trainer in Seattle, Washington. Giving them step-by-step specifics — like how to gather students on the rug in an organized way or how to capture attention with a simple arm gesture — might seem basic, but can make the overwhelming first days of teaching much more manageable. 

“The generalities of ‘build relationships,’ ‘have a positive classroom climate,’ ‘plan your lessons effectively,’—they’re just too nebulous and vague for new teachers to act on them,” Groshell said. “You need to get more specific.” 

A  ‘gradual release’ to full teaching responsibility 

Traditional student teaching offers new teachers two stark realities: practice lessons in controlled environments, and then full responsibility in a classroom of students. But residency models emphasize “gradual release” to full independence, especially in hard-to-staff areas like special education. 

“My first year as a teacher, I cried almost every day,” said Geri Guerrero-Summers, a special education teacher at Mariner High School in Everett, Washington. New teachers went from “you’re going to observe” to “jump right in,” she said. “Student teaching was unpaid. … It’s really a rough type of process in becoming a teacher.”

Guerrero-Summers now works as a mentor teacher with the Washington Education Association’s , the first teachers’ union to step into training and licensing teachers. Originally funded with federal pandemic relief money, the union residency launched in 2023 and has recently obtained status as a registered apprenticeship program with the U.S. Department of Labor, which comes with an investment of $3.4 million. 

“We strive to make sure our residents are classroom ready, no matter where they’re placed,” said Jim Meadows, dean and director of educator career pathways center at WEA.

Future educators begin with 18 weeks working as a paid assistant in special education classrooms, often called a paraeducator, followed by seven weeks of classes, finishing with 36 weeks of clinical rounds, slowly taking over responsibilities as full-time teachers. 

Apprentices spend time in a variety of special education settings and age groups. The residency was created to address a specific challenge, an of special education teachers in Washington state. A found that 1.5% of special ed teachers were unqualified to teach, nearly three times the state average for other types of teachers. in the state make up more than all other vacancies—including STEM teachers and English language teachers—combined. 

Gradual release has been critical for learning the detailed skills of a special educator, said current resident Beck Williams. For example, writing, reading and interpreting Individualized Education Programs, which lay out a student’s classroom supports and accommodations and their learning goals, are covered in coursework but look much different when working with families and young people.   

“In special education teacher training, there’s not enough practice with IEPs and parent interaction,” said Williams’ mentor teacher, Angela Salee. Special education teachers often have to play several roles in IEP meetings, advocating for the student’s best interest while explaining accommodations to other teachers, administrators and families. 

In Mississippi, where have a teacher shortage, alternative licensure programs like the Mississippi Teacher Corps offer two-year residencies and accompanying master’s degrees to get more teachers up to speed as quickly as possible. 

Residents jump right into classrooms and start teaching summer school. They plan lessons and figure out classroom management, all under mentors and supervisors, right away. 

“Part of the difficulty of teaching is that you can’t fully prepare someone for the classroom,” said corps director Joseph Sweeney. “So part of it is that experience they need in the classroom. You have to get them on their feet to show them what it’s like.”

A dozen state leaders, all from Republican-led states, wrote to Linda McMahon, President Donald Trump’s education secretary nominee, last week asking her to push for greater state control over federal education funds and to avoid issuing guidance they say is “not anchored in law.”

In the Jan. 28 letter, shared exclusively with �鶹��Ʒ, they also want McMahon, former head of World Wrestling Entertainment, to send large buckets of funding for schools, like Title I money for low-income students, as a block grant. But they stopped short of stating support for abolishing the U.S. Department of Education — President Donald Trump’s top education policy goal. 

“By prioritizing state leadership and flexibility, the Trump administration can unleash the full potential of America’s schools and students,” they wrote. “Please defer to state and local decision-making as much as possible.”

The letter outlines conservative chiefs’ priorities as Trump takes aggressive steps to reshape the federal role in education. He frequently to “send education back to the states” and is expected to issue an executive order before the end of the month that would call on Congress to close the department.

The memo offers specifics that have been lacking in many discussions over how the relationship between the federal government and the states might change. But some experts wonder if the freedom GOP leaders seek will leave high-need students without services currently provided under law. Madi Biedermann, a department spokeswoman, confirmed they’d received the letter, but said officials wouldn’t share it with McMahon until she’s confirmed. 

The 12 leaders who penned the letter, both elected and appointed, are from Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, Utah and Wyoming. 

Oklahoma state Superintendent Ryan Walters was not among them, despite the fact that he has been the most vocal about and at one point, threatened to . 

The proposals should provide additional talking points for committee members during McMahon’s confirmation hearing Feb. 13. While it would require congressional approval, the chiefs want to see the of funding under the Every Student Succeeds Act — like Title I and Title III for English learners — consolidated into a single block grant for “maximum flexibility.” 

They want to design their own formulas for distributing the money to districts so they can address the needs of rural areas, for example, and state-specific learning initiatives. In the meantime, they want the new secretary to grant as many waivers as possible from the accountability requirements of the law so they can “present new ideas” for how to spend the money.

‘Dilute the protections’

Rebecca Sibilia, executive director of EdFund, a research and policy organization, said she wasn’t surprised that the chiefs didn’t advocate eliminating the education department outright. Many of their states on federal funds and spend less state money on schools. The department, she said, is doing those states “a great service.”

While some state leaders might view the federal requirements as “overly burdensome,” she said their push for more control could come at the expense of students who require extra help, like those in poverty, English learners and homeless students. 

“Once you start blending all of those titles together you start to really dilute the protections that are going to individual students,” she said. 

The letter doesn’t mention the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which under , would move to the Department of Health and Human Services.

“IDEA oversight is giving some people pause,” she said. “That piece of legislation is very specific to education.”

Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, say they have “serious concerns” about any attempts to shutter the department. On Thursday, they to Acting Education Secretary Denise Carter asking for more transparency on how the department plans to continue running programs it oversees, like financial aid and afterschool programs.

“We will not stand by and allow the impact that dismantling the Department of Education would have on the nation’s students, parents, borrowers, educators and communities,” they wrote.

In their letter, the state chiefs pushed back on the department’s practice of using “dear colleague” letters to enforce its priorities, which they said have often been “treated as legally binding policy.” Guidance from the department, they said, should merely be a suggestion “so as not to force behavior change.”  

During the Obama administration, for example, Republicans fought guidance that said students should be able to use bathrooms that match their and another that said districts could risk civil rights investigations if Black and Hispanic students were . 

On Wednesday, the Education Department issued stating that it would no longer enforce the Biden administration’s Title IX rule, which extended protections to LGBTQ students, and that any investigations based on the 2024 rule would be “reevaluated.” 

Nat Malkus, deputy director of education policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said he hopes Trump honors the chiefs’ request, but noted the “chaos” that has marked Trump’s first few weeks in office. Trump’s efforts to freeze federal funding have been . And even some have questioned Elon Musk’s authority to gain access to government payment systems and disable an agency that provides foreign aid.

“The ‘pen and phone’ approach, to quote Obama, whipsaws state leaders across administrations and is lousy federal governance,” he said. “My worry is less about the secretary nominee and more about the ‘move fast and break things’ approach we’ve seen so far in many other dimensions of this young administration.”

All Alaska students could be provided free breakfast and lunch at school, under a new bill in the Alaska Legislature.

Democratic Rep. Maxine Dibert of Fairbanks prefiled the legislation, , ahead of the legislative session that began on Tuesday. The bill would direct the state to provide sufficient funding to all districts to have breakfast and lunch for any student who requests it, free of cost.

“I’ve seen the effects of feeding our kids, and especially during COVID, when all kids got lunches and breakfast at no cost,” said Dibert, who has been a teacher. “So it was just very enlightening, and I would love to see that again for our families and for our students and for our school staff.”

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During the COVID-19 pandemic, federal relief funding allowed schools to provide free meals due to federal waivers. But those funds sunsetted in 2022, resulting in some

, over half of Alaska’s students — 51% — were eligible for free or reduced price meals. An estimated 46%, or roughly 48,000 students, were enrolled to receive free school meals.

As an elementary school teacher in Fairbanks for 22 years, Dibert said she herself sometimes paid for her students to eat, rather than see them go hungry.

“Over the years, if a student didn’t have enough money, or their bill wasn’t paid, oftentimes I would even pay with my account,” she said. “I don’t know entirely how big those bills got, because I was on the classroom side of it. But I did really not like seeing kids come into the classroom sad that they couldn’t get breakfast or lunch.”

Dibert, who is Koyukon Athabascan, also cited the current Yukon River salmon crash leaving communities and families who subsisted and shared fish going without.

“My grandparents lived out on the Yukon River, and as a child, they would always send us salmon from the Yukon River. And we always would have food on our table, lots of salmon,” she said. “So with no salmon on the Yukon, I know that’s a hardship to feed families, and it’s costly to families. So in that aspect, this bill could be very beneficial to ease the pain there, to help feed kids.”

Education and health researchers point to universal free meals having for students, including improved academic performance, attendance and student health outcomes.

Dibert said the bill is in the beginning stages of the legislative process, so details will be worked out, but she hopes the program would also promote local foods on school menus, like salmon or moose. “It would be working district by district, for sure,” she said. “I don’t want it to be canned, you know, protein, like, one grain, one fruit.”

The allocations to school districts would also vary by region and food prices, she said, accommodating notoriously higher grocery prices in Alaska’s rural areas.

She said funding the proposal could include some federal or municipal contributions as well.

“It’s not that much to have the opportunity to feed our kids,” she said.

Last year, the Legislature axed funding for making reduced-priced lunches free for low-income students, The estimated $480,000 in funding was to be taken from the Department of Corrections, but lawmakers voted against it.

Once the bill has been formally introduced during a House floor session, it will next be assigned to relevant committees for discussion and debate in the coming weeks.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: info@alaskabeacon.com.

Education funding is back on the docket for the Alaska Legislature. On Friday, Independent Rep. Rebecca Himschoot of Sitka introduced legislation, , to substantially increase the amount of funding per student.

The two-page bill would increase the base student allocation, the core of the state’s school funding formula.

The base student allocation is currently $5,960 for .

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If passed, the new legislation would boost the BSA by $1,000 next school year, as well as two increases of $404 each in the following two years.

In addition, the bill would adjust for inflation each year, based on the average consumer price index over the previous three years.

For next school year, the BSA would total $7,249, a 22% increase. By the 2027-2028 school year, it would reach an estimated $8,510, for a total increase of roughly 43% over three years.

Lawmakers say the boost will help address a major historical shortfall in funding. School costs rose by nearly 40% since 2011, while the BSA increased by only 10%, Himschoot filed along with the bill.

“There’s a huge gap there,” Himschoot said in a news conference Friday. “All of us have noticed, and have heard from parents, from families, from school districts, that that gap is there. And it’s causing huge, huge problems and taking opportunity away from our students. So this bill looks to correct that.”

House lawmakers also hope to address the state’s teacher shortage. Vacancies have more than doubled since 2021, from 260 to 598 full-time certified teaching positions vacant this year, by the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development. This year’s state budget increased school funding by an amount equal to a $680 BSA increase, but did not make a permanent change to the formula.

“One-time funding is not effective,” said Democratic Rep. Andi Story of Juneau, who is co-chair of the House Education Committee with Himschoot. “Many families … have seen too big of a churn by teaching staff, and a lot of that has to do with only one-time funding coming. So we know we need to make it permanent and this bill addresses that.”

Last year, Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed a bill to increase per-pupil spending, what he said was the need to address education policy issues, including teacher retention and provisions to support charter schools.

“Without a comprehensive plan to address the education issues of the state, simply increasing funding to the current system does nothing to increase the educational outcomes and potential of our youth,” Dunleavy

Legislators sought to override the veto, but the effort , resulting in the state enacting the one-time funding increase.

This year, lawmakers acknowledged there are major issues to address with rising district costs, particularly for transportation, heating and insurance costs, as well as declining school enrollment. Proponents of the bill aim to boost the base student allocation tied to inflation, on a continuous basis so school districts can address those deficits and plan for the future.

“It shifts the risk,” Rep. Himschoot said. “The risks of inflation fall on districts right now, and it shifts that risk to the state.”

On Monday, the House education committee heard impassioned testimony from school officials, parents, and business, municipal and tribal leaders from around the state, in support of the funding boost.

“We have no health, no social-emotional learning, and no physical education curriculum. We have no in-person music, art or foreign language programs,” said Madeline Aguillard, superintendent of the Kuspuk School District in the middle Kuskokwim River region, detailing extensive budget cuts already made.

“We have extremely reduced academic programs. We have no in-person career and technical education courses. We have no advanced courses for students pushing to pursue higher education or technical fields. We haven’t been able to adopt a social studies curriculum in the last decade,” she said.

“Some of these things can be provided online, and we do rely on a lot of online vendors,” she added. “However, we lack the adequate technology to be able to even provide devices for all of our students.”

The legislation comes at a time when school districts across the state are facing major deficits and considering school consolidation and closures, including in , , , the and .

Steve Rowe, an Anchorage parent of three and owner of a general contracting company, testified to the committee that the cost of school funding is essential.

“I promise you, I scream ‘budget’ every day to about 50 different people, and to stay within it,” Rowe said. “But I also can stand back and recognize at certain points, it doesn’t matter what the budget is in certain sectors, we have to fund those no matter what the cost is, and if that means making it painful somewhere else, then so be it. That’s just what we have to do. I believe education has to be one of those.”

Jenna Wright, president of the Anchorage Economic Development Corp., highlighted the economic costs of Alaska’s current school issues.

“I have heard from more than one employer over the last year that has said they’ve lost a candidate because of perceptions about a lack of education system,” Wright said. “So by underfunding education, we’re losing families, workers and taxpayers to other states with better-funded schools. This is eroding our economic base and undermining our efforts to grow a robust economy.”

Increasing the BSA is one part of the school funding formula

Alaska has a complicated public schools for its approximately

The base student allocation is just one part of the formula, which takes into account several factors, including the number of students enrolled, number of correspondence students, school sizes, location in urban or rural areas called district cost factor, career technical education and special needs students.

The state contributes about 62% of funding to school districts, along with municipal, federal and some grant funding. But how far that funding goes also depends on the district.

Alaska has 53 school districts across the state, and 34 of those are located in municipalities with tax revenue to contribute to schools.

There are 19 districts that are Regional Education Attendance Areas with no municipal government and no taxing power. “So their only source of funding is the state or federal government,” said Alexei Painter, director of the Alaska Legislative Finance Division, which analyzes the budget for lawmakers. Painter provided an overview of the school funding formula to the House Education Committee on Jan. 24.

The path for school funding legislation

Lawmakers in both the House and Senate have said that school funding is one of their main priorities this year.

Dunleavy has also said he plans to introduce legislation to increase school funding. His in December reduced education funding by $213 million, since it did not continue with the one-time funding.

He said in school funding could be added, if lawmakers can agree to certain changes in education policy.

Sen. Löki Tobin of Anchorage, chair of the Senate Education Committee, said she is planning to introduce school funding legislation in the Senate. This week, the House Education Committee is holding public testimony on the proposed BSA increase legislation on Wednesday, Jan. 29, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: info@alaskabeacon.com.

Alaska’s Department of Education and Early Development released statewide assessment data on Friday that shows most students are not proficient in core subjects.

The scores are similar to overall, even though the state in January. Education Commissioner Deena Bishop said then that Alaska’s standards are still in the top third in the nation.

The Alaska System of Academic Readiness test, commonly referred to as the AK STAR assessment, evaluates student knowledge of grade-level standards in English language arts and mathematics for third through ninth graders and grade-level standards for science in fifth, eighth and 10th grades.

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Student scores fall into four levels of achievement: advanced, proficient, approaching proficient, and needs support.

Across grade levels, roughly 32% of Alaska students were proficient or advanced in both English language arts and mathematics. Nearly 37% of students across grade levels tested were proficient or better in science.

Bishop appealed to Alaskans to use the results for continuous improvement in a statement released on Friday.

“State assessments play a role in measuring how well our students meet the Alaska standards — standards shaped by Alaskan educators. By accepting the results without defense, we commit to using these data for improvement,” she said in a news release. “Alaska is not merely focused on the outcomes themselves, rather our goal is to build the capacity in our students’ foundational knowledge and ability for their future in work and life.”

Pre-pandemic comparisons to measure if students’ scores are improving after school closures are difficult because the state changed its assessment. Scores were in the 2018-2019 academic year, however. Then, 39% of students were proficient in or advanced scorers in English language arts and nearly 36% of students were proficient or better in math.

Fifth graders performed best on the 2024 tests. More than 37% met or exceeded state proficiency standards, which was a nearly 2% increase over the previous year. Nearly half of fifth graders, more than 47%, were proficient or better in science standards.

Eighth, ninth and tenth graders had lower levels of proficiency. The state said “efforts are underway” to support students in reading and offer career and technical education options.

Officials with the state Department of Education and Early Childhood did not respond to questions about how to understand this year’s scores in the contact of previous years and pandemic recovery.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: info@alaskabeacon.com. Follow Alaska Beacon on and .

Alaska school districts risk losing access to up to several hundred thousand dollars in federal funding aimed at homeless students if they aren’t able to commit to spending it by the end of September.

The was included in a federal law providing pandemic relief, and national advocates have been pushing for Congress to extend the deadline, as it became clear that money could go unspent.

The exact amount Alaska districts could lose isn’t clear. Alaska districts have spent nearly 70% of their $2.3 million boost, leaving more than $700,000 unspent, according to the . The Department of Education and Early Childhood did not respond to a request for the most up-to-date figure or whether districts are on-track to spend down the balances.

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U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, worked on an amendment to the 2021 American Rescue Plan that secured $800 million nationally for students experiencing homelessness nationwide. Alaska districts received about eight times their usual annual funding.

The National Conference of State Legislatures called on Congress to extend the timeline to spend the money, under the terms of a longstanding federal law, known as the , aimed at ensuring homeless children’s access to schooling.

Barbara Duffield, the executive director of the national advocacy group SchoolHouse Connection, said the NCSL’s resolution is significant, even if it is likely too late for an extension from Congress.

“The window for that extension, sadly, has gone,” Duffield said. “Not for a valiant and a smart and a popular fight, but because of all these other dysfunctions in Congress.”

She said the resolution did more than ask for an extension; it showed the importance of the funding across states and territories.

“It puts a body of state legislators on record as saying we should have had more time. And moving forward, there needs to be more of a priority in investing in this population,” Duffield said.

The most recent state data shows that , and that the number has risen over the last several years. Most of those students live with another family, but about a fifth live in shelters and 10% are unsheltered.

Increased funding and programs typically leads districts to identify more students who are homeless, according to SchoolHouse Connection’s research. That data shows that the actual number of students that are homeless is typically 50-100% more than the official school count.

School districts in Anchorage and Kenai used the money to bring on additional staff to work with unhoused students. The Child in Transition Program in the Anchorage School District used its additional funding to hire two full-time staff for remote sites and five part-time staff in high schools that are there to support students on campus and connect them to services. David Mayo-Kiely runs the program, which has operated since the 1990s and has 10 staff members.

“They check in on attendance, they check in on grades. They’re just sort of there to be another ally for these students, someone they can go to,” he said.

Those roles are important because of how homelessness can negatively affect students at school. Students who are homeless are chronically absent at roughly the rate of their housed peers, which is known to be detrimental to academic performance. They are also nearly 30% less likely to graduate than their housed peers,.

ASD’s program also spent money on internet hot spots for students, professional development for the staff, and supplies. Mayo-Kiely said the district will leave only a very small amount of money unspent.

“The funding has been wonderful for us,” he said. “We were interested in having an extended funding, but we had been planning the entire time that this funding would be expiring by the end of this calendar year.”

And he said the funding will have a lasting effect, even though it expires at the end of the year: The investment in staff demonstrated how important those on-campus “allies” were for students, so now the district is using money from other grant programs to continue funding them.

The that urged Congress to extend the deadline was a priority of Sen. Löki Tobin, D-Anchorage and chair of the Senate Education Committee, after the Alaska Legislature failed to pass a similar resolution drafted by her office. Tobin is a member of the NCSL Education Standing Committee.

“Our hope with this resolution is to say, ‘Could we continue to use McKinley-Vento funds in this manner — hiring additional support personnel to provide wraparound services for the entire family?’ and also for us to think about how we might be able to reserve some of the remaining funds to continue serving students into the FY25-26 school year,” she said.

The funding that came with the pandemic boost also has more flexible spending rules that mean districts can spend it on student transportation to the same school, even if the student’s address changes — such as if they move in with a friend’s family or begin living in a shelter. Districts can waive certain enrollment requirements temporarily to make sure the student starts on time, and even help with school supplies.

“We have a significant increase in youth experiencing homelessness that has persisted, and we know that it’s not going to be an easy fix,” Tobin said. “Particularly with the lack of affordable housing in the Anchorage bowl, with some of the instability and low wages in some of those entry and mid-level positions. So we’re really anticipating that this population is going to continue to need additional resources and attention.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: info@alaskabeacon.com. Follow Alaska Beacon on and .

Laurie Duncan got her pink slip at the end of April, after her second year teaching first grade at Xóots Elementary in Sitka. She got the news during her prep period. She was three months pregnant.

Nearly 20% of the teachers in Sitka were laid off this spring due to financial uncertainty. That included all of the district’s librarians and most of its reading specialists.

“I can’t really necessarily get a new job, because I’m about to go on maternity leave in August and have a baby,” she said, then laughed. “I’m kind of in a bind. This baby’s coming, and I can’t not have the baby anymore!”

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Duncan has a master’s degree in teaching and plans to stay and raise a family in Sitka, where her husband is from. She had a plan for a long-term substitute teacher for the two months after she delivered. Instead, she lost her health care at the end of May. She didn’t find out she got a job back until July.

She, and a number of other laid-off teachers got rehired recently after Gov. Mike Dunleavy signed into law the Legislature’s one-time, $680 increase to the per pupil funding formula. The boost came after districts painted a desperate picture of their finances during the legislative session and Dunleavy lawmakers’ attempt to make a significant, long-term increase to the school funding formula. He said it lacked his priorities for education, like bonuses for teachers, more options for charter school approvals and changes to reading education. Lawmakers didn’t override the governor’s veto by one vote.

Districts statewide say the one-time increase helps their finances and allows them to bring back some of the teachers they laid off, but in many cases the news has come too late. Many school boards had already opted for conservative budgets, fearing Dunleavy would . Some teachers left their districts and communities to seek more stable work.

Duncan said several of her colleagues moved on because they couldn’t risk being out of work.

“You have to make choices for your family, and that’s a big bummer, because we’re losing fantastic teachers,” she said.

The state is unlikely to regain them all, even as officials invest in studies and working groups to solve a recruitment and retention crisis that meant the state’s public schools started last year with.

Some teachers move on, or resign

The Ketchikan district laid off teachers — roughly a third of its staff — before on the gamble that Dunleavy would allow most of the Legislature’s one-time funding to stand.

Jill Nordtvedt Lenhard and her husband were both teachers there until they got their pink slips in early May. She said their health insurance was slated to be cut off at the end of June, and they have an autistic son they needed to think about.

“We had some really big decisions to make,” she said.

Lenhard took a job teaching English in Petersburg where she had worked for roughly two decades. It came with a substantial pay cut because the district only puts 10 years of experience towards the salary scale for rehires. And since her husband, who was tenured in Ketchikan was among the teachers hired back, they will be living apart for the next year.

“The governor’s decision to veto that education funding back in March had such wide-ranging impacts on school districts and teachers and administrators and students around the state,” she said. “But it’s personally created a pretty difficult situation for my family.”

A spokesperson for Dunleavy’s office said the governor is “acutely aware” of what districts need to function and that the governor has supported hundreds of millions of dollars in education funding.

“He believes school districts need more resources, but if they are having issues accounting for their money and/or they’re having fewer students going into schools, we need to have a discussion,” wrote Deputy Press Secretary Grant Robinson in a statement.

Sarah Campbell has taught in the district for 20 years and is the president of the teacher’s union there. She said the district lost a “master teacher” in Lenhard.

“I’ve never ever seen such a disruptive and chaotic end to the school year,” she said in June. “Teachers are in tears. We’re cutting preschool. We’re cutting — we still don’t have activities funded for next year.”

In August, after the one-time funding increase survived the veto process and almost all teachers got called back, she reflected on the cost of the upheaval.

“The only reason our district was able to recall all of the teachers back is because we had probably, like, 12 resignations,” Campbell said. “So because the layoffs happened and we had people kind of panic, and they’re like, ‘I can’t not have a job next year; I must have a job.’”

The scramble to restaff schools is really disruptive to the overall educational program, she said. The district cut its information technology director and curriculum director, and eliminated all the elementary school counselors. Many teachers are going back to new jobs at different schools.

“While people may have been recalled back for jobs within our school district, they’re teaching at different schools, different grade levels and potentially different subject matter. So essentially, they’ll be starting all the way over here; it’s like having to rebuild something from scratch,” she said.

Campbell said it’s been a stressful time, and said because lawmakers approved only one time funding, “We are going to be in the same exact situation this upcoming school year.”

Michael Robbins, the district’s superintendent, confirmed the district lost about a dozen teachers to other jobs and said consistent funding allows districts to create consistent teacher contracts.

“They’re professionals. They put a lot of time and effort into being a teacher, and they should have that consistency, knowing that they’re going to have a job and that they’re going to be able to work in a community that they want to,” he said.

The yo-yo of layoff and hire-backs may be counterintuitive against the backdrop of a serious teacher shortage in the state and the nation. Alaska’s university system does not enough teachers to fill the teaching position job openings each year, so Alaska must compete with the Lower 48. Some districts hire international teachers or use emergency contracts to staff their classrooms.

Other districts are feeling the turbulence, too.

Anchorage Education Association President Cory Aist has raised the alarm about teachers leaving the Anchorage School District. By the union president’s count, nearly 400 teachers resigned in the last school year from the district alone. The district’s recent average is 200-300 teachers a year, but that number has been .

“Our educators are looking for exit strategies,” he said in testimony to lawmakers in February.

In the Juneau School District, more than three dozen teachers resigned in an eight-week period this spring, school board member Will Muldoon said in June. The district planned to lay off nearly 50 teachers, but was also able to bring dozens of positions back after Dunleavy signed the budget without vetoing any of the one-time funding for districts. In Juneau that ended up being roughly $5.2 million.

Juneau Superintendent Frank Hauser said that, ultimately, the district laid off about four teachers, but that number is only so low because of the teachers who resigned or retired.

In Sitka, the layoffs could have been more extreme, but the district planned to spend down its budget reserve to $10,000 in order to keep teachers and what remains of programs like art, music and physical education.

“We had to cut most of our non-tenured teachers,” said Superintendent Deidre Johnson, in an email. Fourteen were laid off, 15 transferred within the district. One retired. Five just left.

Mike Vieira, a lifelong Sitkan and a teacher of more than two decades, said both his daughters’ teachers got layoff notices.

“Our district has never seen anything like this,” he said in June.

In July, the principal at the high school where he teaches resigned for a job in Washington state. The Spanish teacher has more than 35 kids in her class: “Her desks are wall to wall,” he said.

“This is going to be a challenging year all around because of what our new reality is,” Vieira said.

The district planned its budget around a $500 per pupil one-time increase in state funding — a good guess, considering the $680 per pupil increase in its budget for the next fiscal year. The one-time funding meant it could hire back four teachers, including Duncan, and build back some depleted funds.

Fairbanks North Star Borough School District Superintendent Luke Meinert said funding uncertainty meant schools had a hard time gauging how much staff they could afford. And since districts haven’t had a significant funding increase in nearly a decade, he said schools don’t want to gamble on overstaffing because they lack the financial cushion.

“For us here in Fairbanks, we had a pretty conservative proposed budget that had sizable cuts to not only staff, but programs within the district,” he said.

“This has been a repeated cycle for almost a decade in Alaska, it seems like, but definitely getting worse. And when that happens, we oftentimes lose really great teachers and qualified teachers that we would love to keep in Fairbanks.”

He said that is compounded by the fact that it is harder to hire teachers now. Also, Fairbanks is a military community, which can contribute to turnover. This year, the district’s elementary schools are starting the year 20 teachers short — a high, according to Meinert.

Sen. Jesse Bjorkman, R-Nikiski, has taught in Alaska for 15 years and is a member of the Senate Education Committee. He said there’s been significant turnover in the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District for quite awhile, partly because the pay and benefits lag behind the rest of the country, but also because of increasing job instability.

“With pink slips being issued year after a year, people just don’t have the certainty that they need to feel comfortable to remain in Alaska,” he said.

“When someone gets notice that they might not have a job in the late winter or early spring, and there’s not resolution to that question until the end of June or early July, that’s a problem.”

For his part, Rep. Ben Carpenter, R-Nikiski and Bjorkman’s opponent, said he recognizes the timing issue — that’s why he and other members of the House tried to pass the education bill early. He supported Dunleavy’s veto of a permanent increase and said a root cause of funding issues is declining student enrollment:

“If we would address those root causes, then some of the funding, the BSA formula funding problem would be less of a problem.”

Carpenter said he would like to see education reform, including more parent involvement in classrooms. “There’s more to it than just the dollar figures,” he said.

Bjorkman is not teaching this fall to focus on politics. He said his former colleagues are seeing a decline of personal opportunity as well as feeling burnout from large class sizes, as schools grapple with not having enough staff.

“It seems like, more and more, people that can get out or move on want to do something else — they’re taking action on those desires. It’s not just a thought, or talk. It’s: ‘Nope. I’m doing this,’” he said.

That was the case for Jenell Hartman, an Anchorage School District health specialist until this May, who said this kind of turmoil was a constant. Her positions were often grant funded; one of the schools she taught in was threatened with closure. She said the straw that broke her as an educator was when the district, seeking financial relief, decided briefly to cut art and health programs from elementary schools.

“There’s never been a level of stability I felt like in the state of Alaska, being an educator here,” she said.

“It’s untenable, and it causes that stress, and it causes this extra layer of: ‘What am I doing with my career?’”

She said she is unlikely to return to teaching, in part because she said the job doesn’t provide a secure retirement plan for Tier 3 employees. Hartman is from Anchorage, so she stayed in state and took a job with the state’s teacher union — advocating for teachers instead of being one.

“To work with kids is a special calling. So I would love to see folks stay and have really good, professional teachers up here and give our kids what they deserve, but also have a dignified salary and retirement that they deserve as well,” she said.

“That’s kind of my hope after leaving the classroom. That’s my hope for the future.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: info@alaskabeacon.com. Follow Alaska Beacon on and .

All but seven of the 56 books the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District removed from school libraries must be reshelved by next week, pending a trial next year, ruled U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason on Tuesday.

The banned books, including well-known titles like Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five” and Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner,” were removed from schools last year without individual consideration of their content after parents and community members complained of “LGBTQ themes” or sexually explicit content in district meetings.

Gleason’s order said the district’s action violated students’ constitutional rights and “raises the specter of official suppression of ideas.” That caused irreparable harm, and would continue to do so if they stayed off library shelves until trial, her order found. The order is a preliminary injunction; the books’ ultimate fate will be determined in a trial scheduled for April of next year.

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The district released a statement on Thursday that said the order is in line with work the school board has undertaken in the last year, which includes reviewing the books and returning some to library shelves. “The Court’s decision directs the District to report on what it has already done including the reshelving of books as directed by the Board,” the statement said, in part.

Savannah Fletcher, the attorney for the plaintiffs with the Northern Justice Project, said the court’s ruling shows that the Constitution doesn’t allow the government to remove books without a compelling reason for an indefinite period of time.

“The Constitution doesn’t allow the government to remove ideas simply because some people disagree with them,” she said.

“I think it’s a really great reminder during this time of tension around our schools, around students rights and parents rights and the protection of teachers and educators, that there is a baseline we all have to follow, and our Constitution is going to protect that. It really reaffirms the rights of students to access ideas, to access information.”

The case comes against the backdrop of a about which books and what kind of material should be available to students. Fletcher said the Alaska case is unique because the district removed such a large quantity of books without individual review.

“This has never been written about by a court before. It is kind of a novel spin on it,” Fletcher said, adding that the lack of precedent presented a challenge when briefing the court.

Meanwhile, some books have already been approved to go back to library shelves by the community. After the district removed them, it established a library committee, a majority of whose members were selected by the school board. The committee was tasked with determining whether the books were “criminally indecent” and it allowed more than a dozen books to return to schools, according to court filings. Another 14 titles were referred to the district for a final decision; others were not reviewed or found to be out of circulation or missing entirely. The court’s decision overrides these determinations, unless the school administration or board provides the court with a compelling reason to remove a specific title.

Scott Adams and his wife Dawn were plaintiffs in the case with their middle school-aged daughter, who he said is an avid reader and fan of the Harry Potter series.

He said he joined the lawsuit because the family felt the district’s action was a violation of the First Amendment and he was “ecstatic” with Tuesday’s order.

“I took an oath when I joined the military over 30 years ago. And the oath — to support and defend the Constitution — doesn’t end when you leave the military,” he said.

He said he wants to see a better process for deciding which books should be in the library, and said teachers and librarians should be trusted with those decisions.

The seven books that will remain off the shelves for indecency in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough school district are “Call Me by Your Name,” “Verity,” “It Ends with Us,” “Ugly Love,” “A Court of Mist and Fury,” “A Court of Silver Flames” and “You” Their removal will be reviewed with the others in the trial next year.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: info@alaskabeacon.com. Follow Alaska Beacon on and .

When the only preschool teacher left Harold Kaveolook School in Kaktovik, a village of around 250 people on the northern coast of Alaska, Chelsea Brower was in charge. It was January and she had been the preschool aide for about a year-and-a-half.

“Being with the kids and trying to be their teacher is what really made me realize I want to be their teacher — and it also made me realize I need to become certified to be their teacher,” she said.

The only problem was that universities that offered the requisite courses were hundreds of miles away, and she wanted to stay in her hometown with her students.

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Fortunately for Brower, the regional Arctic Slope Community Foundation has been working with other tribal groups, the state and federal Departments of Labor and the University of Alaska at Anchorage to develop an apprenticeship program that aims to grow the teacher pipeline in Alaska. The program was approved by the University of Alaska Board of Regents last week and solidified the first apprenticeship programs for teacher licensure in Alaska.

The tribal, state and university partnership unlocks millions of dollars in grant funding to educate and support the apprentices. It is all possible because the DOL made teaching an apprenticeable trade in 2022.

Now Brower can keep her job with the students in her community while she gets her education paid for. She is one of dozens of apprentices that will begin their coursework remotely with UAA this fall.

Brower is Inupiaq and said she hopes to build cultural values in the school.

“The students are seeing more people that look like them inside their school, and I’m hoping that it gets more people to want to become certified to be teachers for the different grade levels,” she said. “That would be good, because we have our language and we could incorporate it more into the school. And (the students) will learn more from the teachers from home than teachers from out of state.”

The news comes as the state grapples with an unprecedented .

Tonia Dousay, dean of the UAA School of Education, said apprenticeships have been common in other industries for a long time, but it was only in 2022 that the state began accepting registered apprenticeships as a pathway to teacher certification.

“Nationwide, we’re watching the registered apprenticeships for educators movement. This fall, we will welcome our first cohort of apprentice teachers from around the state,” she said. “This takes our degree and makes it the required training for a registered apprenticeship through the U.S. Department of Labor.”

The program targets paraprofessionals, people without teaching credentials who already work in the state’s schools, like Brower.

Paradigm shift

Leaders from regional, tribally-affiliated groups worked together to build the apprenticeship program in Alaska with an aim to create a local teacher pipeline in the communities they serve, which are largely remote districts that are the trickiest to staff. Bristol Bay Regional Career and Technical Education Program, Sealaska Heritage Institute and Arctic Slope Community Foundation are sponsor groups for apprentices in their respective regions.

Steve Noonkesser, who works with BBRCTE and is a former superintendent, said the groups worked with the U.S. Department of Labor in Anchorage to become apprenticeship sponsors. That opens up federal funding and grant opportunities to track their apprentices’ progress on different skills, called competencies in the apprenticeship world.

“When you do a federal apprenticeship, you learn skills, and you basically check off competencies as you work through it — whether you’re an electrician or a plumber or a welder or, in this case, a teacher,” Noonkesser said.

The state’s Board of Education and Early Development has also and passed a resolution supporting them, but no state regulations about how to become a teacher have changed.

Since state law dictates that one must have a bachelor’s degree to become a certified teacher, the groups partnered with UAA and School of Education dean Dousay to create a pathway to a bachelor’s degree for the apprentices.

The sponsors, like Noonkesser, work with DOL to keep track of the competencies and on the job learning hours; UAA keeps track of the degree progress and academic hours.

Noonkesser said that there are additional hurdles to getting the degree for people who live in remote parts of Alaska, including financial challenges, difficulty in access and the often low quality of internet that may prevent potential students from taking online courses on their own. For those reasons, he said the apprenticeship coursework is delivered differently and with a different context: culture and place-based connection to community.

“We’re really heavily emphasizing that, because that we think has a huge bearing on recruiting teachers and teacher retention. You know, staying in the community and keeping teachers longer, because the turnover rates in Alaska have become just astronomical,” he said, pointing to districts hiring ever increasing numbers of teachers from overseas because they “just can’t hire enough teachers from Alaska.”

“We think that this program will help not only retain teachers more, but it will connect the teachers that are in our schools much better with the kids they’re serving,” he said.

In his region, he said, 80-95% of the students are Alaska Native compared to only about 8-12% of the educators.

BBCTEP’s first cohort, he said, is predominantly Alaska Native paraeducators who are from the region. And he said he expects the learning will run both ways between them and their mentors. “Our apprentices, a lot of them are from the community. Many of them have as many as 10 or 15 or 20 years of experience in the schools — as a parent, professional, as a classroom aide — and are very much connected to community, place and culture. And a lot of our mentors are very good teachers, but they’re from somewhere else, and so we kind of are feeling like both have a lot to learn,” he said.

Kristy Ford, SHI’s education director who oversees the program in Southeast, said it opens up more opportunities because it allows apprentices to work through three tiers of certification, starting with a child care development specialist certificate, then moving to associate’s and bachelor’s degrees.

“It gives everybody an access point,” she said. “It’s a paradigm shift in my opinion. We’ve been doing the same thing with our universities over and over and over, and we’re getting the results that we have: It’s a rotating door in a lot of our schools. And so by having individuals who live in the community who are aunties, uncles, parents, guardians of the kids in those schools — I think is going to be a game changer.”

Ford said the program is the first of its kind in the state.

Community, place and culture

Patuk Glenn, executive director of ASCF, said she they are sponsoring apprentices because they want to see increased engagement and better scores from their students in the North Slope and Arctic regions.

“I think it can all be pointed back to our children, especially in rural Alaska, whose test scores are not making the mark,” she said. “If you look at the AK Star Report for 2023 there are 92% of our children in our Arctic Slope region that are not proficient in the state assessment. That is a serious issue, and over the years we’ve tried to address that in so many different ways.”

She said she wants to see scores go up so that kids have better chances later in life.

Ryan Cope, grant director for ASCF, said that is why the program was developed with the understanding that educators have a responsibility to make education speak to students. In the Arctic, he said that means giving teachers a strong pedagogical foundation, so they can incorporate their place-based and Indigenous knowledge.

“Quite frankly, it’s about meeting them halfway and having more teachers in the classroom understand who these kids are, where they come from, and what they do in the community. (Teachers) that really can kind of identify with them, and, in a lot of cases, having educators that look like them, speak like them, that know their language. These are very important things that I think that we have all wanted to see.”

Cope said the state’s teacher certification process has not yielded enough of those educators, which is why the apprenticeship program is necessary. ASCF has also added the Inuit Circumpolar Council standards to its curriculum. In the Bristol Bay and Southeast regions cultural values are also incorporated.

Cheryl Anderson, an administrator with ASCF, added that there’s another shift as well: Alaska Native educators were not always encouraged to return to their home communities to teach, she said.

“My parents, they wanted to go and teach back in their village on Kodiak Island, but they were discouraged to do so, saying they were told that they didn’t want anybody back from there to go back and teach in their community,” she said, adding that her parents ended up teaching in Anchorage instead.

“For the state of Alaska to now be really open and accepting to having people in their own communities … I’m happy to see that. I’m glad I could see it in my time, in my parents’ time.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: info@alaskabeacon.com. Follow Alaska Beacon on and .

Alaska’s Supreme Court justices on Friday that struck down key components of the state’s correspondence school program.

Nearly 23,000 homeschool students may continue to use their allotments of state education money to pay for private school tuition until the Anchorage Superior Court reconsiders the case.

The Supreme Court made its decision a day after oral arguments in an appeal of the ruling in State of Alaska, Department of Education and Early Development v. Alexander, in which plaintiffs argued that it is unconstitutional for public education money to be spent on private school tuition.

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The justices explained that they issued a quickly to avoid affecting thousands of students’ education and will complete a formal ruling later.

Supreme Court justices agreed with the state’s hired lawyer, Elbert Lin, that the lower court wrongly decided the state’s statute was unconstitutional in its entirety. They said state law could be preserved “because there are many constitutionally permissible uses of allotment funds.”

They sent the ruling back and directed the Superior Court to consider whether spending is unconstitutional on a case-by-case basis. That could mean individual districts, which are directly responsible for monitoring allotment spending, would be the defendants, rather than the Department of Education and Early Development. The justices wrote that they could not make such a ruling now because no districts were present, or joined in the lawsuit, at the time of the appeal.

They also directed the Superior Court to consider a group of correspondence families’ argument that the U.S. Constitution requires the state to allow families to use allotments on private school tuition.

Both the state and the parents who use state money to send their children to private schools asked the court to decide whether it is constitutional for families to spend the homeschool allotment on full-time private school tuition.

“We decline to make such a ruling at this point,” the justices wrote, and explained that the issue did not come up in the original case and neither plaintiffs nor the correspondence families submitted arguments about it in their appeal.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy, Education Commissioner Deena Bishop and Attorney General Trag Taylor praised the decision. “The Alaska Supreme Court clearly saw the flaws in the prior decision and in the plaintiffs’ arguments,” said Taylor in a news release.  “To strike down the entire statutory scheme on the allegations of one type of unconstitutional spending does not comport with the laws of statutory and constitutional interpretation. Statutes are presumed constitutional and there must be a high bar to strike them down. This is a win for the rule of law as well as Alaskan families.”

wife Jodi Taylor wrote a step-by-step of how families can use allotments for classes at private schools.

Scott Kendall, attorney for the plaintiffs, said the justice’s decision may not be what he wanted, but he feels confident about the case.

“They were much more concerned with the procedural aspects of their case, not the substance,” he said.

When the Superior Court reconsiders the case, the plaintiffs could  identify a district that allows correspondence allotments. Kendall said that a school district may even seek to join the case of its own volition, to argue that its practices should be allowed.

“I am not a betting man, but if I was, I would bet big money on the fact that you cannot constitutionally spend public funds through a correspondence program for tuition at a private school,” he said. “It’s just going to take us just a bit longer to reach that ultimate outcome.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: info@alaskabeacon.com. Follow Alaska Beacon on and .

For any district, it’s difficult keeping students engaged all school year. However, when those students are spread out in 48 schools across an area the size of West Virginia, the challenge of ensuring continuity of learning feels even more overwhelming.

During the 2021-22 school year, half of the students in my district, Alaska’s Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District were chronically absent, requiring educators to jump into action so students could remain connected and on track to a successful future. By thinking creatively and merging policy changes with innovative ed tech solutions, educators can confidently help every student succeed, no matter where and how they learn.

First, we realized we had to stop the blame game and keep an open mind. The reasons behind attendance problems are as diverse as the students the district serves, and because of its location, Mat-Su has its own, unique issues. For instance, Alaska’s vast geography means that student athletes may be away at games three or four days out of the school week, and families often travel, hunt or camp for a week or two at a time. In addition, transportation constraints are an ongoing problem, as are inclement conditions ranging from snowstorms to earthquakes.

Until the pandemic, the district operated with the same attendance policy that had been on the books since the 1990s: Students with 10 unexcused absences a semester were immediately unenrolled. This essentially closed the doors on the young people who needed support the most — those with learning difficulties, instability at home and social, emotional and mental health concerns.

Today, online learning platforms offer the district a holistic view of each student’s grades, behavior and attendance, allowing school staff to easily identify red flags in attendance and use the data to prompt discussions with families and caregivers. Building these relationships has allowed the district to analyze the root causes of absenteeism and intervene with personalized solutions attuned to each student’s needs. 

Whether connecting families to wraparound resources that address mental health, transportation or trauma-related issues or working with staff and teachers to create a hybrid environment that allows students to learn both virtually and in person, the district strives to prevent a few absences from evolving into a chronic problem. We also no longer unenroll a student after 10 absences, but instead bring the family and stakeholders together to coordinate care in the event of a crisis.

Second, in its mission to ensure no student falls through the cracks, the district has taken a collaborative approach, developed by teachers, support staff and administrators, to clearly define learning standards and construct relationship-centered educational environments. This brings everyone together so we’re all on the same page.

Since the pandemic, the district has shifted away from the Carnegie Unit, which conflates time and learning, toward a more personalized, adaptive and mastery-based, standards-based system. While credits and grades are still identifiers of student progress, they’re no longer the primary criteria for evaluation. Educators have established standards in all subjects to ensure students’ mastery of knowledge and skills before they can progress to the next lesson. Through a combination of one-on-one instruction and virtual learning, teachers can help students revisit and hit learning targets they may have missed. As technology evolves, educators are working in sync to provide students with the academic support they need.

In addition, every high school student is enrolled in the district’s , which helps support their Credit, Career, College and Community Goals. Students are assigned an adult mentor who works with their teachers, counselors and families to help foster their success and growth. They also participate in weekly goal-setting and spend class each week working on reading, writing and mathematical skills. Because connectedness is a driver of regular school attendance, these relationships have been critical in engaging students in their schools.

Third, the district is integrating to align education with how and where a student learns best and to make sure that those learning from home because of transportation issues, illness or injury will receive the same enriching experiences as their peers in the classroom. 

All 19,000 students in pre-K through 12th grade receive Chromebooks loaded with educational tools that build on what they’re learning during the school day. In addition, the district has helped close learning gaps through guided online tutorials and the program, which assists with credit recovery for juniors and seniors. Taking full advantage of technology has been especially beneficial for rural schools that often have a smaller staff, fewer courses and higher absenteeism than their suburban and urban counterparts closer to the Anchorage metropolitan area.

Watching chronic absenteeism rates soar across the U.S. is incredibly disheartening for educators who want nothing more than to see students thrive. Until there’s a miracle solution that fixes every transportation issue, controls the weather and cures all illnesses, students will always be absent. It’s up to districts to move from penalizing students for missing school for reasons beyond their control to mitigating the impact of chronic absenteeism on their academic success. 

About a dozen preschoolers played in the snowmelt in the yard of Hillcrest Children’s Center in Anchorage this April. Most were zipped into heavy duty outerwear against the spring chill. All of them were splattered with dirt.

“One of our values is mud,” said Christina Eubanks, the center’s director, before an exuberant and particularly mud-coated child pulled her aside to tell her about his day and offer her some of the muffin that was part of the day’s afternoon snack.

Caring for kids costs money. Eubanks had popped out into the yard after reviewing the budget the center’s board had voted on the night before. The balance sheet is riddled with negative numbers, but Hillcrest will be in the black this year. That is only possible because of nearly $200,000 in grants from federal pandemic aid that the organization used to offset tuition costs. “That is not expected in the year coming forward,” Eubanks said.

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The state will distribute the last of the federal aid to child care centers this summer.

“So we’re hoping that will be enough to balance out this year’s budget. It would be great if there was some funding to go into next year’s,” Eubanks said.

Hillcrest had to increase what it paid workers just to be competitive with unemployment benefits during the pandemic. Eubanks said she knows the child care center’s costs are reaching the limit of what families can afford, but the parent-run board still voted to increase its monthly rates to up to $1,850 to keep up with the cost of operation.

It is in these tenuous conditions that Alaska lawmakers passed the child care legislation. The proposed law expands eligibility for families to get financial assistance for child care, offers tax incentives for companies to invest in child care options and gives the state the option to consider the actual cost of care, rather than the market rate, when setting its rates.

Lawmakers separately included $7.5 million in the state’s budget for grants to support child care .

Stephanie Berglund, the leader of a nonprofit resource and referral center for child care in the state, hailed the achievement. “This is a landmark milestone for Alaska,” she said. “What’s significant is recognizing the importance and value of working families, and the need for our state to be investing in critical child care support.”

By her estimate, the changes could double the amount of Alaska families eligible for child care subsidies and assistance. But she said that since the pandemic, nearly a quarter of Alaska’s small child care businesses have closed and her organization has not seen new ones fill the gap. She cautioned that without movement to support child care businesses and create new ones, there may not be enough programs for newly qualifying families to apply their benefits to.

“This legislation is just one piece of what’s needed. Child care is still very much in crisis in Alaska,” she said.

It doesn’t fix everything

Rep. Julie Coulombe, R-Anchorage, sponsored the legislation, which began as — and she is the first to admit that it is not a complete solution. “HB 89 doesn’t fix everything. But it’s a start,” she said. “I think it just brings a lot of people hope that maybe we can keep this momentum going.”

Coulombe serves on the governor’s child care task force and said there was celebration of the bill at its meeting this week because the changes come directly from work with state staff and care center operators from around the state.

The piece she is most excited about is the public private partnership that offers tax credits to businesses that make payments or contributions for child care and child care facilities. “In my opinion, that’s what’s going to move the needle the most, because that’s right where people are working, that’s their employers. That’s going to have a really big impact.”

Another supporter of the bill, Rep. Zack Fields, D-Anchorage, said its language was based on  legislative best practices from around the country that were successful in states with either  mixed or Republican-led legislatures. “It represented what is possible in Republican legislatures,” he said.

He also stressed the need to expand child care. “It’s not enough to stabilize a sector; the sector has grossly inadequate capacity right now,” he said. So, he too has his eye on tax credits.

“The biggest question is, what is the uptake on these tax credits to expand care?” he said. “The best thing that could happen would be a bunch of companies invest in new child care facilities.”

The tax credit is the reason Kati Capozzi, president of the Alaska Chamber, was one of the bill’s most active advocates. She said it is a priority for the businesses that are her organization’s members, an indication that the businesses that pay taxes in the state would use the incentive.

“They took a look at it, saw the tax credits that are available and encouraged the chamber to support the bill, presumably because they plan on using the tax credits that are included in it,” she said.

Data shows unaffordable or unavailable child care affects Alaska’s workforce. Seventy-seven percent of Alaska parents reported missing work because of child care challenges in .

‘Hail Mary’

The milestone legislation did not succeed as a standalone bill. Instead lawmakers slipped it into a much larger bill at the 11th hour of the legislative session. Coulombe described it as “kind of a Hail Mary,” but said she doesn’t mind what form it takes as long as it serves its purpose.

After passage by the House, HB 89 got hung up in the Senate Finance Committee. Sen. Cathy Giessel, R-Anchorage, tried to put the bill’s language in a bill that dealt with Medicaid in schools, but that proposal didn’t get enough votes. So Fields asked Coulombe for permission to add it as an amendment to a popular board extension bill. “It’s the last day, and I got nothing to lose. So let’s just try it,” Coulombe recalled saying. It passed easily in the House and the Senate concurred just before gaveling out for the year at about a quarter midnight.

Fields called the amendment’s passage a “miracle,” but there is another hurdle before the bill becomes law. The popular bill that was such a successful vehicle for HB 89 was also a successful vehicle for a wide-ranging array of other bills. The practice of adding legislation as amendments to bills likely to pass, known as “bill stuffing,” is common and widespread, but this particular instance may have stretched the limits of what is allowed. Lawmakers are restricted to keeping the amendments to a single subject. The measure, Senate Bill 189, now ranges from board extensions to child care to big game permitting and marijuana taxes.

“The governor has always said he supported HB 89,” the original bill, Coulombe said, but added that she is sure the administration is going to give it a close look.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: info@alaskabeacon.com. Follow Alaska Beacon on and .

Families who use Alaska’s homeschool program will soon have clarity on how they may spend their allotments of state education money.

Lawmakers directed Alaska’s Board of Education and Early Development to write temporary regulations for the state’s correspondence school program that comply with the state’s constitution on Wednesday night. The law also requires that the education department begin to for the first time in a decade. It was approved unanimously by both the House and Senate.

The move comes after a Superior Court ruling found two components of the laws that govern the state’s correspondence program to be in April, which left the families of more than 22,000 students for curriculum, tutoring and physical education. The state has appealed the decision; the Supreme Court scheduled the hearing for June 25.

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Lon Garrison, director of Alaska Association of School Boards, said the advocacy group supports the new law. “It is simple and similar to what existed prior to 2014,” he said by text on Wednesday. He referred to the year then-Sen. Mike Dunleavy changed state law to allow families to spend homeschool allotments on materials from private and religious institutions — the pieces of statute a judge found to violate constitutional prohibitions against spending state money on private education.

House Education Committee Co-Chair Rep. Justin Ruffridge, R-Soldotna, initially proposed the language in and said his office worked into the wee hours of the morning to get approval between the bodies without drama and contention. “I think it’s a good fix,” Ruffridge said after the Senate approved it. “I think it’ll be important to come back next time around and continue to take up the question,” he added.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy and the education department signaled support for the bill.

Its language was rolled into a widely supported bill to require in schools in a late-session amendment.

Senate Education Committee Chair Sen. Löki Tobin said she supports the change “cautiously” with the recognition that lawmakers have more work to do to make the programs viable after a Supreme Court decision.

The law does not include some changes in the Senate’s proposal.

Sen. Jesse Bjorkman, R-Nikiski, told lawmakers that unspent homeschool allotment money would rollover to the next year and that students would not be required to take standardized tests. Those items generated pushback from families that use the program.

“I would hope that homeschool students would like to show off and showcase what they know and how much they know,” he said. State data shows less than 20% of correspondence school students choose to take standardized tests, which has led to questions about how well the programs work.

Sen. Shelley Hughes, R-Palmer, underlined two popular effects of the fix that led to the compromise: “It is important to have stability and the removal of the disruption and anxiety for the families. But I also selfishly appreciate the fact that this will avoid a special session.”

Alaska Beacon reporter James Brooks contributed reporting to this story.

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The Alaska Supreme Court hearing the state’s appeal to a court case that struck down key components of its correspondence school program before the end of June.

Oral arguments would be held June 25, five days before the end of on the lower court’s ruling.

Superior Court Judge Adolf Zeman ruled that allowed public funds, in the form of per student allotments, to be spent at private and religious organizations in violation of the state constitution. Attorneys for the state appealed the decision last week.

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The court date comes as lawmakers seek statutory fixes to stabilize correspondence programs for the families that use them.

and take different tacks, however. HB 400 instructs the governor’s appointees on the state’s Board of Education and Early Development to find a constitutional solution and its language leaves the door open to a constitutional amendment. SB 266 repeals the language Zeman found unconstitutional and tightens restrictions on how families spend and districts report state education dollars. It would also make it tougher for parents to opt out of standardized academic testing for their children.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy has signaled that he would not allow a legislative fix to become law before the Supreme Court’s decision. Any decision would come after the end of the regular legislative session on May 15. Dunleavy has suggested a special session of the Alaska Legislature may be necessary to respond.

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The Alaska House of Representatives voted by a wide margin and with bipartisan support on Friday to .

, from Rep. Sarah Vance, R-Homer, also requires companies that provide internet pornography to check whether an Alaskan viewing that pornography is at least 18 years old.

The bill, which passed on a 33-6 vote, advances to the state Senate for further consideration.

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Vance said the age requirement, which also requires parents to sign off on 14- and 15-year-olds using social media, is about protecting children.

“It contributes to the well-being of our children, because we know that continued exposure to this kind of content affects their mental health, the way that they view themselves, the way that they view relationships, body images, and it really gives a twisted view of what healthy sexuality is,” she said before the vote.

The bill was originally written without the social media component, which was inserted via an amendment offered Wednesday night by Rep. Andrew Gray, D-Anchorage.

“I believe that with the inclusion of (a) social media (ban) for kids under 14, and only with parental consent for those under 16, we are achieving the goal of the underlying bill, which is to prevent young people from seeing online pornography,” Gray said before the vote.

The bill’s opponents — and even some of its supporters — said they believe it raises privacy and constitutional free-speech concerns. The bill requires pornography websites to verify ages via a “commercially reasonable age verification method,” which could entail submitting an ID.

Supporters who acknowledged those issues said they hope that the Senate will address potential problems, while detractors said the potential problems are too big to be overcome.

“There might be a scenario in the future where it is safe enough to protect people from privacy concerns, but really, I am very concerned about the privacy of all individuals who might have to comply with this type of commercial age verification technology,” said Rep. Genevieve Mina, D-Anchorage, who voted against the bill.

Rep. David Eastman, R-Wasilla and another opponent, said that right now, the United States has a very different view of the internet than a place like China, which puts restrictions on its citizens’ use.

“We are so close to going more in a direction with China’s internet,” he said, “where anytime you hop onto the Web, you have to upload your picture, you have to upload your template and again, you’re going have to do something to verify who you are, and then that will be tracked.”

The original version of the bill is similar to legislation backed by , which says that 16 states have passed bills it supported.

Legal challenges in state and federal courts have had mixed results, and last month, the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Texas’ version of the law in a 2-1 decision.

Gray, who added the social media ban to the bill amid bipartisan support, also successfully amended it to include a $100 per-year state voucher for parents who buy content-filtering software.

Under the language of the amendment, parents would submit a reimbursement request to the state.

Eastman, speaking to the voucher plan, criticized it as poorly worded and suggested that Alaskans might be able to receive reimbursements for their Netflix subscriptions because that company offers content-filtering features on its video streaming service.

Vance said legislators should not lose sight of the bill’s ultimate goal.

“In the end, we’re protecting the most vulnerable among us,” she said.

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After a court ruling that , members of the state Legislature have proposed a constitutional amendment that would allow public money to go to private and religious schools.

is scheduled for hearings Wednesday and Friday next week in the House Judiciary Committee.

If approved by two-thirds of the House, two-thirds of the Senate and voters this fall, HJR 28 would remove the part of Article VII, Section 1, that says, “no money shall be paid from public funds for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.”

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That clause was specifically flagged by Superior Court Judge Adolf Zeman when he struck down a law dealing with payments to the parents of children in the state’s correspondence programs.

Some parents had been using the money to pay for tuition at private schools, and Zeman concluded that the law had been deliberately written to allow the practice, making it unconstitutional.

HJR 28 also proposes to change Article IX, Section 6, which prohibits spending public money except for public purposes. The proposed amendment would add a clause saying that the section doesn’t prevent payments “for the direct educational benefit of students as provided by law.”

In a statement accompanying the release of the draft amendment, Rep. Sarah Vance, R-Homer and chair of the judiciary committee, said that “by allowing public funds to benefit all Alaskans seeking educational opportunities, this amendment promotes fairness and empowers choice in education.”

Rep. Jamie Allard, R-Eagle River and a member of the judiciary committee, said that a public vote — required of any constitutional amendment — would empower voters and “ensures that all Alaskans have a voice in shaping the future of education in Alaska.”

While large numbers of state legislators and Gov. Mike Dunleavy have expressed alarm about the legal decision on correspondence programs, many have said they intend to postpone action until after the Alaska Supreme Court addresses the topic.

Talking to reporters on Tuesday, several members of the supermajority caucus in charge of the Alaska Senate said they would be unlikely to support a constitutional amendment eliminating the prohibition on public funds for private schools.

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Alaska students may be required to pass a civics test or take a civics course to graduate from high school if a new proposal becomes law.

would significantly boost the state’s investment in civics education, from an updated curriculum to a dedicated statewide civics education commission.

Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak, proposed the updates in an effort to increase civic engagement and understanding of democracy among the state’s youth.

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“There’s been a quiet epidemic, I think, in this country over the years — a sort of apathy and actually division,” said Stevens, a retired history professor. “For decades, we have focused on other issues, other than civics education, and certainly those have all been good issues. Math, science, reading, writing: All of those are important. But we’ve done that at the expense of social studies.”

The Senate passed the bill last May, sending it to the House.

On the measure’s first hearing in the House Education Committee, Stevens pointed out that preparation for active citizenship is a foundational principle of public education. He said strong policy is needed to show students that preparation for civic engagement is as important as preparation for college and career.

The bill would require the state’s Board of Education and Early Development to develop and maintain a statewide civics curriculum based on the federal naturalization exam immigrants must take to become citizens. Students would have to take a semester of civics or pass an exam to graduate high school.

The bill stipulates that, in addition to including information on how the United States and Alaska governments work, the curriculum must also include systems of government used by Alaska Native people.

John Pugh, a former University of Alaska Southeast chancellor, former Department of Health and Social Services commissioner and Air Force veteran, said he supports the bill because his personal and professional experience show how important it is for citizens to engage with their civic responsibilities.

“Over the years in the university, there’s strong research showing that individuals who do have this knowledge or take coursework in political science and government — that they do engage more than others who do not,” he said.

The upgrades would come at a cost, including the addition of a dedicated social studies content specialist and Alaska Civics Education Commission coordinator within the education department, as well as travel costs for the civics commission to meet.

Rep. Andi Story, D-Juneau, wanted to know why the bill does not call for additional money for school districts to pay staff to teach civics courses.

Stevens said the coursework in civics should be considered part of basic education.

“We’re giving billions to education,” he said. “We can expect our departments, our school districts, our teachers to provide basic education, which is citizenship. So I think that’s just a responsibility of the department of education and a responsibility of the budget we give to them.”

Co-chair Rep. Jamie Allard, R-Eagle River, mentioned that Sen. Click Bishop, R-Fairbanks, took the proposed civics test and got a perfect score. She said the bill will be heard again in the House Education Committee for amendments and public testimony. It has not yet been scheduled.

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Rural Alaska schools despite Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of a multipart education bill this week.

Early Thursday morning, the Alaska House of Representatives voted 36-4 to advance , which offers rural schools as much as $39.4 million in state aid to match federal dollars intended to improve their internet service.

Rep. Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham and the leading House lawmaker behind the bill, said he expects the Senate to take it up speedily and said the governor’s office has told him that Dunleavy is inclined to allow it to become law.

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Legislators must act quickly: March 27 is the final federal deadline for rural school districts to apply for funding that pays for nine in every 10 dollars of their internet bills.

If districts miss that deadline, they won’t be able to reapply until next year.

Currently, the districts are limited to speeds of 25 megabits per second, slow enough that it no longer qualifies as “broadband” under published by the Federal Communications Commission last week.

HB 193 provides a state match for federal funding that pays for speeds of up to 100 mbps.

“No. 1, we don’t have much time left. We have seven days until there’s an absolutely hard stop,” Edgmon said late Wednesday night.

Last year, 151 schools benefited from the program, but many have said that the current limits on bandwidth and speed are too low for modern use.

“We’re in an era when schools are relying more and more on better internet speeds for everything from teleconferencing to taking tests … it’s become an essential service,” Edgmon said.

Rep. Thomas Baker, R-Kotzebue, said that in some of the schools he represents, it might take 15 minutes to open a Wikipedia page, and that some administrators have to cut internet to parts of their school building to ensure that there’s enough bandwidth for other students.

Rep. Alyse Galvin, I-Anchorage, urged lawmakers to support the bill, citing public testimony that showed it took some students four days to take an online test because of inadequate internet. Students in Anchorage could complete the test in a single day, she said.

“If we’re going to have a system of public education, then we need to make sure this gets leveled out,” she said.

Funding for the improved internet program had been included in Senate Bill 140, comprehensive education legislation that passed the House and Senate in February, but Dunleavy vetoed the bill and on Monday, lawmakers failed by a single vote to override the veto.

House Rules Committee Chair Craig Johnson, R-Anchorage, said the push to get HB 193 through the House late Wednesday and early Thursday was at least partially attributable to the Alaska Beacon’s reporting on the issue.

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Updated Jan. 25

In 2022, only one state, Arizona, had more chronically absent students than Alaska, where more than missed enough school to be academically at-risk, according to a national nonprofit.

That means nearly half of Alaska students missed at least 10% of the school year in the most recent available data. In a presentation to the Senate Education Committee on Wednesday, Hedy Chang, executive director of the nonprofit Attendance Works, said chronic absenteeism rates have doubled nationwide since the pandemic and Alaska is no exception.

“Part of why you want to notice chronic absence and make sure that kids have good attendance is because it ultimately gets to those outcomes that we really care about,” she said.

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The organization chronic absenteeism as missing 10% or more of school days for any reason.

Data collected by Attendance Works showed that the increases in chronic absence in the state are occurring at the same time as the state’s scores on national standardized tests are dropping. “I think something like 25% of that decline is explained by attendance, the increases in absences actually,” Chang said.

Data also showed the second graders who were chronically absent were less likely to be able to read at grade level than their peers who were not chronically absent. Chang said that the consequences could persist and manifest as poor performance in middle school and a higher likelihood of dropping out of high school.

Before the pandemic, nearly half of the state’s schools experienced “extreme chronic absence,” where 30% or more students are chronically absent. In the 2021-2022 school year, 86% of Alaska schools experienced extreme chronic absenteeism.

Chang said when students show up everyday to school, it builds routine, reduces stress, creates a sense of security, and increases engagement.

“What happens in school is not just instruction, but all those relationships and the opportunities to learn and develop with peers, as well as with adults, when you go to school,” she said. “It gives you greater access to resources, whether that’s mental health, meals — meals is something that we really saw during the pandemic, tutoring, mentoring, technology or also those extracurriculars — sports, music — that really help develop a whole person. And then attendance really matters for learning.”

Chang pointed to underlying causes of absenteeism, such as trauma, housing or food insecurity, lack of challenging or culturally responsive education, or lack of meaningful relationships with adults at school — especially given staff shortages, her presentation noted.

Sen. Löki Tobin, D-Anchorage, said she would like to see guidance from the Department of Education and Early Development on policy approaches so that the Legislature can support schools and districts and address what she called a “clearly highly impactful issue.”

Tobin noted that the presentation showed that culturally relevant education is among the solutions to chronic absenteeism. She said she is looking at tribal compacting and ways of decolonizing education in the state as potential ways to address the different ways of learning and knowing in Alaska’s communities.

“Sometimes our students are absent because they’re hunting or they’re fishing, or they’re spending time with their grandparent, or they may be skin sewing with an elder. And sometimes the way that we catalog learning within a Western construct, may not necessarily fit our state,” she said.

Tobin said that she was caught off guard by how much absenteeism can affect reading outcomes, a metric that legislators aimed to improve when they passed the in 2022.

“The Alaska Reads Act was so important to me when it comes to creating that statewide understanding that every child has a right to learn to read. That right also means that you have to get to school,” she said. “We can’t just set policy and forget it.”

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The Alaska board of education approved lowering the test score standard for student proficiency, after school leaders cited the state’s nationally high bar.

Student success on standardized tests is categorized by what are known as cut scores, which are the range of results that show indicate a score is above or below proficiency for a grade level.

Alaska’s standards for proficiency have been among the highest in the nation, and some educators and officials have said that the state has set the bar, or the cut score, too high in some areas.

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At its regularly scheduled meeting on Wednesday, the school board approved a series of adjustments to those standards for the Alaska System of Academic Readiness, known as AK STAR tests, which was proposed by the Department of Education and Early Development. It also updated regulations for administering assessments to students with disabilities.

DEED Commissioner Deena Bishop said the new cut scores are a better reflection of the kind of growth that is possible for typical students to achieve in the months between assessments. She said the adjustments may lower the expectations for proficiency, but that does not mean Alaska’s standards are now low.

“We’re still in the top third of all states in the nation for expectations and high standards,” she said. “We’re just not at the top anymore.”

Some members of the public were critical of the changes, and said the state should be supporting teachers and students rather than lowering expectations.

Timothy Doran, a former educator and administrator who now serves on the Fairbanks North Star School District Board, said he wants to see the state review its assessment standards before it changes cut scores, but added that he appreciated DEED’s process.

“We’re setting a cut score based against a standard which is 10 years old and have not been reviewed for whether they’re appropriate,” he said. “We’re applying it to a test for which we have not looked to say, ‘What’s going on here? Are students understanding these questions? Have we set that bar so high that students can’t get over it?’”

Haines Borough School District Superintendent Roy Getchell praised the department for its efforts. He served on the policy review for the regulation change.

“Assessments in Alaska around the country have had too many setbacks, stops and starts that have really kind of eroded the confidence of our processes, which is why it was critical that we get it right out of the chute. And I’m much more confident that what’s being presented today is going to be right from the start,” he said.

Lisa Parady, who has a doctorate in education leadership and is executive director of the Alaska Council of School Administrators, said policy reviews like this one are a normal process, and that the state has seen a lot of assessment changes over the years.

“We’ve seen a lot of changes, and now we’re on a good path,” she said. “It’s incumbent upon every one of us to make sure that what we put out is accurate and right and aligned, so that our teachers can get what they need in terms of the results of this assessment.”

Alaska’s STAR test results were delayed this year because of the change to cut scores, the department said.

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Head Start, the federally-funded early childhood program for children from low-income families, is Alaska’s largest early childhood program.

Head Start programs have been among the child care and early education centers clamoring for financial help in recent years as they struggle to pay staff and keep prices in the range that families can afford.

A proposal from the Biden administration would increase the pay for Head Start teachers, whose salaries have not kept pace with other industries, said Khari Garvin, director of the Office of Head Start at the Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He visited Alaska last month.

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“The feedback that was shared in Alaska is consistent with what we have tended to hear from other programs across the country as well,” Garvin said. “Some of these programs have had to, unfortunately, close some classrooms because they just have not had the opportunity to hire all of the qualified staff that they needed, including teachers.”

The would raise the average Head Start teacher salary $10,000, improve benefits, and increase access to mental health supports. These changes are all responses to the early child care that has closed 1 in 5 Head Start classrooms nationwide, despite waiting lists for children to get into programs.

Once a final rule is published, Garvin said, it can be funded one of two ways: Congress can allocate the money necessary to boost staff pay for Head Start, or, if Congress doesn’t fund or fully fund the rule, individual Head Start Programs will have to work within their budgets to make the salary changes.

Mark Lackey, the Chair of the Government Affairs Committee for the National Head Start Association, runs five Head Start programs in the Mat-Su Borough. He said Congress and the state of Alaska have under-funded the Head Start program for years, so it will be hard to come up with the money to substantially raise wages.

“Maybe we’ll have kids draw dollar bills, and we’ll see if we can cash those,” he joked before underlining the serious trade-off to wage increases without funding increases. “It is possible. And the way it will be possible is that programs will have to sacrifice a lot of child slots.”

Lackey is not filling all the slots he has available for children because he doesn’t have enough staff, even though demand for child care and early childhood education is as high as ever — he has had a waiting list at his programs since before the pandemic.

He said that, like most Head Start programs nationally, he can only fill about 80% of his staff positions and most departing teachers say they leave because of the low wage. Lackey said he has hired 150 people in the last two years and is still short-staffed because most of them have left for higher wages elsewhere.

“There’s no doubt my wages need to be higher. If they want me to pay higher wages with the same amount of money, the only option I have is to serve many fewer children,” he said.

Lackey said the $10,000 boost to wages wouldn’t even get his employee salaries as high as they need to be competitive. The federal government suggests that Head Start wages should come into line with teacher wages, which are higher, by 2030. Nationally, the average Kindergarten teacher makes roughly $58,000 a year; Lackey said wages for his Head Start staff are in line with the national average annual salary of $38,000.

Most money for the Head Start program comes from the federal government. Individual programs must make a 20% contribution to be eligible for federal funding. The state of Alaska used to fully support that match for Head Start, but stopped increasing the amount of funding it contributed in 2010. Due to inflation, the state now pays roughly 11% of the match, Lackey said.

This year the state’s Legislature earmarked $5 million for an increase to Alaska’s Head Start so programs could better match federal contributions and pay staff more, but Gov. Mike Dunleavy , cutting the increase to $1.5 million.

The new proposed rule will be published to the federal register on Monday, Nov. 20 and the public will have 60 days to comment. There is no final date for the rule to be enacted.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: info@alaskabeacon.com. Follow Alaska Beacon on and .

Student leaders from 18 communities in the Lower Kuskokwim School District gathered in the Bethel Cultural Center on Tuesday to talk about a subject that isn’t usually the focus in a classroom: the students’ strengths.

Everyone was a little quiet at first — the students had flown into Bethel from all over a region of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta that is roughly the size of West Virginia.

But they started to open up when the instructor, Robyn Weiner, split them into groups with poster paper and markers and asked them to draw things that give them strength. A group from Kasigluk, a village to the northwest of Bethel, filled the poster paper with dance fans, boats, fishing nets, basketballs and berry picking.

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The students were all from grades 6 through 12, and they were there because their communities had identified them as leaders capable of learning the lessons of a suicide prevention program called Sources of Strength. They will be responsible for bringing the lessons of the day home to their peers.

The program teaches students to identify the factors that make them resilient, and shows them how to create their own pathways to healing in times of stress or trauma. The program is in its third year in the district, and administrators say it addresses the hardest issues youth face with positivity.

The program’s aims are weighty, but the word suicide was not mentioned at all in the five-hour session. The material focuses instead on resilience and personal values. Students got to share the things that bring them joy and make them feel supported. They laughed, and even played games that had the whole room smiling and cheering. That joy was the program’s medicine, and the fact that it came from the students themselves was the point.

Grief

Jim Biela, an itinerant social worker for the district, has traveled to several villages in the region regularly for the past 19 years. And in his counseling sessions lately, he said, there’s been a concern among his students that stands out.

“Grief. The past couple of years it’s been more grief. Understanding grief. They’ve all been affected by death,” he said.

Biela said some students have lost parents to murder and suicide: especially difficult deaths to process. But he said he worries about the effects of losing a parent for any student.

“They don’t have anybody to show them the culture and traditions. And they struggle with their identity,” he said.

The wall above Biela’s desk is covered in artwork and pictures of students he has counseled and befriended. He pointed out several who have died from suicide, then pulled one image off the wall and looked at it for a moment: “I knew him since he was one year old,” he said, before gently laying it down on his desk.

Alaska has the in the nation; youth who are exposed to suicide are . Suicide was the leading cause of death among Alaska Native and American Indian people between the ages of 10 and 24 years old in the state, according to the most recent two years of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Biela said he has seen Sources of Strength work to ease the effects of grief in the region — the district began offering the program to all schools after it was successful in Nightmute. Biela said last year, after the program, the Nightmute students’ grades even shot up.

Biela largely credits two students, Cory and Colby George, with leading Nightmute through the program after a tragic loss. The brothers are now about to graduate high school and they came to the training in Bethel.

Community change through youth leadership

Sources of Strength is so named because its premise is that a path to healing can be found through eight factors: Mental health, family support, positive friends, mentors, healthy activities, generosity, spirituality and physical health.

As Weiner, the instructor, explained each source and gave examples, Lillian Kiunya, another itinerant social worker from Bethel, translated them all into Yup’ik. After each strength was explained, the students were invited to share what part of their lives corresponded to it.

Physical health meant basketball and Native Youth Olympics for many students. For one young woman, mental health was berry picking. For another, family support was the grandmother who adopted her after her mother died. For Colby George, he last found the strength of his spirituality in seal hunting: “I was scanning the water and I felt instant calm before the negativity comes,” he said. “Then I was enjoying the view and the sun.”

Two years ago, when he and his brother Cory brought Sources of Strength to Nightmute, they used the mental health example of Cory’s guitar, his source of strength. “I was trying to calm my mind and drawing a guitar and it really helped me,” he said.

He said the program gave them hope. “We were going through a tragic event and we found a way, like, how to be with it. And it really helped us, it made us be confident,” Cory said.

He said after the presentation, people in their village rallied around them. “After that, everybody was coming to us, talking positive to us, making us laugh,” he said.

Colby said the community response was impactful for him as well: “People that had brighter smiles than before came up to me,” he said. “Even other villages, they were coming up to us and saying quyana for bringing this up.”

The brothers even started a basketball team at the school — physical health — that went to district finals in its first year. “I saw that the kids were getting on track,” Cory said.

The brothers are 19 now, so they can’t play in games with the team, but they can practice with the others. For Colby, basketball is another source of strength.

“I love how basketball could tickle my heart,” he said, with a big smile.

‘This is really powerful’

Meghan Crow, the lead social worker for the district, said the program is a good fit for the area. It is aimed at suicide prevention, but Crow said that the resilience building students learn is applicable in other areas of their lives as well.

“We deal with a lot of crisis,” she said. “And we have a lot of really isolated communities. There’s just been a lot of assimilation, cultural change imposed upon communities. I think that’s something that our communities have struggled with.”

She said the school district is also an organization imposed on communities, so she wants to make sure it promotes strengths that exist within them already. She said the Sources of Strength curriculum allows youth to match sources of strength to Yup’ik values.

“It’s very open to cultural interpretation, and to use those strengths and match them to strengths of our culture and our communities here,” she said.

Lower Kuskokwim Superintendent Kimberly Hankins spent the morning at the training. The district began the program in 2020, when students could not travel.

“But even though it was on Zoom, we saw the response. And we thought, ‘This is really powerful.’ And so we’ve been continuing to invest in it and grow it over time,” she said. The district had its first in-person training last year.

Only a handful of schools in the district have not yet had training. At the end of the day, as students ate lunch and began to gather their overnight bags for the flights home, Hankins and Crow huddled with the instructor to figure out how to bring the program to the schools that were left.

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