Alaska
Alaska House plans fast action on bill that would boost school funding and tie it to inflation
The Alaska Legislature is getting to work on a bill that would lay out a three-year plan for boosting public education spending. Rep. Rebecca Himschoot, I-Sitka, introduced the bill Friday, which would boost the base student allocation, the largest component of the state’s public school funding formula, and provide annual inflation adjustments.
In total, Himschoot said, per-student state funding would increase by:
- $1,289 next school year, a 22% increase over this year
- $691 for the 2026-27 school year
- $570 for the 2027-28 school year
Himschoot, a former teacher who co-chairs the House Education Committee, said the bill is an effort to catch up after years of inflation outpacing public school funding. Adjusting for inflation, total public school funding — including federal, state and local contributions — peaked in the 2010-11 school year, according to legislative budget analysts who briefed the committee on Friday.
Prices have risen by nearly 40% since 2010, while base education funding has risen by roughly 7% over the same period, according to documents Himschoot filed alongside the bill.
“There’s a huge gap there,” she said. “I think that all of us have noticed and have heard 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.”
Leaders of both the House and Senate have said increasing the base student allocation is a key priority.
Education funding reached record levels last year after lawmakers passed a $175 million one-time funding increase for public schools, but the one-year bump was not included in Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s budget for the next fiscal year. That means lawmakers will have to budget at least that much to keep school funding at current levels.
Himschoot’s bill is just two pages and addresses only the base student allocation. That’s a contrast with last year’s approach, when lawmakers pursued an omnibus funding bill that was ultimately vetoed by Dunleavy. The Legislature failed by one vote to override his veto.
This year, Dunleavy says he plans to introduce a $200 million education bill pairing a funding increase with reforms. Rep. Mia Costello, R-Anchorage and the House majority leader, said funding was only one piece of the puzzle.
“Our focus should be on preparing Alaska’s students to succeed,” she said by text message. “While the funding discussion is important, equally important are enacting new policies that can improve outcomes for our students and families.”
Republican lawmakers plan to discuss the funding issue at a retreat over the weekend, she said.
Sen. Löki Tobin, D-Anchorage and chair of the Senate Education Committee, said she plans to introduce a similar bill in the upper chamber. She said she thinks it’s important to tackle the funding question before moving on to other education policy issues.
“All of those things I anticipate we will tackle in the next two years. However, you can’t rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic as it goes down,” she said by phone from Anchorage. “You have to get the ship stabilized and moving in the right direction.”
Majority lawmakers say they hope to move the bill through the House and Senate quickly, since school districts typically have to submit their budgets in early spring.
Rep. Andi Story, D-Juneau, a former school board member who also co-chairs the House Education Committee, said the three-year phase-in and inflation adjustment are meant to make budgeting more predictable — and stem the tide of outmigration.
“This is an effort to keep our residents here (whose) number one thing is, how are you going to educate my kids?” she said.
Though it could ease budgeting for school districts, Rep. Will Stapp, R-Fairbanks, said tying education funding to inflation might make the state’s budget less predictable.
“Inflation is tricky because we, at a state level, don’t control monetary policy,” he said. “That’s typically how a liability gets away from you in a budget process, to tie it to something you don’t control.”
The House Education Committee plans to hear Himschoot’s bill, House Bill 69, at least three times next week. They’ll take public testimony at two hearings scheduled for Wednesday.
Christmas presents may be arriving later than expected for many rural communities in Alaska. That’s after Alaska Air Cargo, Alaska Airlines’ cargo-specific carrier, placed an embargo on freight shipments to and from several hubs across the state. According to Alaska Airlines, the embargo began on Dec. 16 and will end on Dec. 21.
The embargo excludes Alaska Air Cargo’s GoldStreak shipping service, designed for smaller packages and parcels, as well as live animals.
Alaska Airlines spokesperson, Tim Thompson, cited “unexpected freighter maintenance and severe weather impacting operations” as causes for the embargo.
“This embargo enables us to prioritize moving existing freight already at Alaska Air Cargo facilities to these communities,” Thompson said in an email to KNOM. “Restrictions will be lifted once the current backlog has been cleared.”
Other carriers like Northern Air Cargo have rushed to fill the gap with the Christmas holiday just a week away. The Anchorage-based company’s Vice President of Cargo Operations, Gideon Garcia, said he’s noticed an uptick in package volume.
“It’s our peak season and we’re all very busy in the air cargo industry,” Garcia said. “We are serving our customers with daily flights to our scheduled locations across the state and trying to ensure the best possible holiday season for all of our customers.”
An Alaska Air Cargo freighter arrives in Nome, Dec. 18, 2025. It was the daily-scheduled flight’s first arrival in Nome in a week after maintenance issues plagued the Alaska Air Cargo fleet. Ben Townsend photo.
Garcia said the holiday season is a tough time for all cargo carriers, but especially those flying in Alaska.
“We operate in places that many air carriers in other parts of the country just sort of shake their head at in disbelief. But to us, it’s our everyday activity,” Garcia said. “The challenges we face with windstorms, with cold weather, make it operationally challenging.”
Mike Jones is an economist at the University of Alaska Anchorage. He said a recent raft of poor weather across the state only compounded problems for Alaska Air Cargo.
“I think we’ve seen significantly worse weather at this time of year, that is at one of the most poorly timed points in the season,” Jones said.
Jones said Alaska Air Cargo is likely prioritizing goods shipped through the U.S. Postal Service’s Alaska-specific Bypass Mail program during the embargo period. That includes palletized goods destined for grocery store shelves, but not holiday gifts purchased online at vendors like Amazon.
“When a major carrier puts an embargo like this it clearly signals that they’re having an extraordinarily difficult time clearing what is already there, and they’re trying to prioritize moving that before they take on anything new,” Jones said.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Alaska Airlines was responsible for 38% of freight shipped to Nome in December 2024.
Alaska Air Cargo’s daily scheduled flight, AS7011, between Anchorage and Nome has only been flown four times in the month of December, according to flight data from FlightRadar24. An Alaska Air Cargo 737-800 freighter landed in Nome Thursday at 11:53 a.m., its first arrival in one week. Friday’s scheduled flight has been cancelled.
Alaska Airlines is adding a daily flight between Bellingham International Airport and Portland International Airport starting next spring, the airline announced Dec. 18.
The flights will begin March 18, 2026 and will be offered during the year on the E175 jets. The announcement is part of a slew of expanded routes Alaska will begin offering in the new year across the Pacific Northwest, Wyoming and Boston.
“Anchorage and Portland are essential airports to our guests and us in our growing global network,” Kristen Amrine, vice president of revenue management and network planning for Alaska, said in the announcement. “Portland is not only a great city to visit, but we also offer convenient nonstop connections for those continuing their travel across our wide network.”
The Portland route is the first time in years the Bellingham airport has offered a flight outside of Seattle or its typical routes in California, Nevada and Arizona. In the last 10 years, Alaska and Allegiant Air ceased non-stop flights to Portland, Hawaii and Las Vegas.
Matthew Rodriguez, the aviation director for the Port of Bellingham, said Thursday his team is excited for the expanded route. The route will also allow Alaska to start data gathering to see if there’s market demand for more direct flights out of Bellingham.
The airline will be able to examine how many people from Bellingham are flying into Portland and then connecting to other flights, including popular destinations like Hawaii and San Diego.
“It’s going to help our community justify a direct flight, which, in my opinion, we have a data that already supports the direct flights, and we already had an incumbent carrier doing those direct flights,” he said. “So I don’t think it’s going to take very much additional data for Alaska to acknowledge that.”
Guests can already start booking the hour-long flight to Oregon on the Alaska Air website or app.
Intrepid airport enthusiasts have also noted Alaska is phasing out one of its nonstop flights between Bellingham and Seattle in early January.
In a statement, Alaska said the “flight adjustments are about putting more connecting flights from Bellingham through Portland to decrease some of the strain in Seattle.”
The phase-out allows for the Portland route to be brought online in time for spring travel.
Alaska is also adding a daily year-round flight between Paine Field in Everett and Portland in June.
This story was updated at 11:53 a.m. with additional comments from the Port of Bellingham.
Annie Todd is CDN’s criminal justice/enterprise reporter; reach her at annietodd@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 130.
The Department of Corrections this week reported the 18th death of an inmate this year, tying the record for the highest number of annual in-custody deaths in at least the past decade.
Kane William Huff, who had been imprisoned at Goose Creek Correctional Center near Wasilla, died Dec. 11, according to a DOC statement. Huff, 46, was serving a sentence for a 2018 conviction on two counts of sexual abuse of a minor, according to online court records. DOC officials said he had been in custody since 2015.
Huff was found unresponsive in the prison’s infirmary, where he had been housed, said Department of Public Safety spokesman Austin McDaniel. Alaska State Troopers, who handle in-custody death investigations, have closed their investigation and are awaiting autopsy results from the State Medical Examiner Office, McDaniel said. Troopers don’t believe Huff died by suicide or that foul play was involved, he said.
The last time as many people died in state custody was in 2022, when a record seven inmates also died by suicide, according to a department snapshot of deaths since 2015.
The Department of Corrections began consistently keeping inmate death statistics in 2001, said spokesperson Betsy Holley. The department also posts data showing in-custody deaths since 2015. That year, 15 people died while in DOC custody.
The state’s official count for 2025 doesn’t include the death of 36-year-old William Farmer, who died in a hospital in January after he was severely beaten by his cellmate at the Anchorage Correctional Complex the month before.
An upward trend of in-custody deaths in the past several years has alarmed some prisoner rights advocates and prompted state lawmakers to ask Department of Corrections officials to address the deaths in multiple hearings this year. The department has also found itself under fire for inmate suicides.
This year, at least four inmates have died of natural or expected causes, such as disease or a medical event, while at least five have died by suicide, according to information provided by Alaska State Troopers.
Officials have also said that a Spring Creek Correctional Center prisoner died of an overdose in April.
Another inmate, 53-year-old Jeffrey Foreman, died in July after being restrained by guards after an altercation with his cellmate at the Anchorage Correctional Complex.
[Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described the year the Department of Corrections started consistently keeping inmate death statistics. It was 2001, not 2015.]
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