Students and school officials from across Alaska visited the Legislature — from the North Slope, to the Yukon Flats, to Yakutat and Hoonah — to make what has become an annual plea to lawmakers to invest in the state’s public education.
“I have been in this building every February for 20 years, and for 20 years I have been saying nearly the same exact thing, and we’re at a point now where that conversation is at an inflection point, ” said Lon Garrison, executive director of the Association of Alaska School Boards, which organizes the annual fly-in event on Monday.
“Pretty soon, public education will not work in the state of Alaska,” he said. “And we have to do something. We have to be bold.”
Decades of deferred maintenance for Alaska’s schools is reaching crisis levels, lawmakers heard, with some districts grappling with deteriorating school buildings, failing water and sewer systems.
Alaska’s school maintenance problems are well-known, but the schools’ needs come with a multi-million dollar price tag. Lawmakers will be negotiating how much to allocate to schools among a slate of other dire state funding needs, from transportation to increased disaster relief funding. That negotiation is further complicated by declining oil prices and state revenues — and the threat of Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto pen.
But on Monday, students and school board members, some parents themselves, shared emotional testimony of how schools continue to endure failing infrastructure.
“Some of our schools are so riddled with black mold that I developed a headache almost immediately,” said Julia Phelen, a member of the school board with the Delta-Greely School District, on visiting rural schools in the Delta Junction area district. “Some of them have only one working restroom in the entire building, and others are hauling water and using honey buckets.”
Last year, the Legislature approved $38 million to address school maintenance needs on the state’s major maintenance list, a ranking of school projects submitted to the state for reimbursement. That was enough to cover the top nine projects on the list. Gov. Dunleavy vetoed that down to roughly $12.8 million, citing declining oil prices and state revenues, to fund the top three projects on the list.
This year, whether lawmakers will allocate more funding for public education remains uncertain amid early budget negotiations.
But leaders in the bipartisan Senate Majority Caucus expressed support for addressing more of schools’ major facilities needs at a news conference on Tuesday.
“Now this year, we’ve got $401 million on the deferred maintenance list of schools,” said Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, a member of the Senate Finance Committee. “We need to have a dialogue with the administration and try to get them to work with us so we can, you know, slow down this deferred maintenance. Because every year doesn’t get addressed, it just gets worse.”
The deteriorating school facilities are coupled with stretched budgets — some districts face steep budget shortfalls and school closures — and rising costs, especially for rural districts. Some speakers said budget shortfalls are forcing districts to cut classes, teachers and activities, which they said is posing a growing risk to students’ safety and wellbeing, including mental health.
Reanna Brown, a school board member from Yakutat, testified that in rural communities like hers, which are connected to the road system only by boat and plane, the costs of education are higher, from retaining teachers to powering buildings and transporting supplies.
“Our students deserve the same opportunities as any student in Alaska, regardless of their zip code,” Brown said. “Stable, equitable education funding allows us to retain quality educators, support student services and provide safe, consistent learning environments.”
In the Yukon Flats School District, which covers a vast area in the northeast of the state, Rhonda Pitka, a school board member, said the decades of deferred maintenance is a constant problem.
“There’s always a problem with the sewer systems and the water systems,” Pitka said. “One of our smallest schools, Chalkyitsik, has about 13 students this year, but they’ve had this water issue for like, 20 years,” she said.
She said extreme cold and the remoteness of schools in the Interior is also exacerbating schools’ water and sewer issues.
“We have incredibly cold weather. It was 50 below for five weeks, and then it hit a three day streak of minus 70 below in the Interior. So, you know, at those temperatures, nothing’s running, nothing’s working,” Pitka said, and spoke about the difficulties of retaining essential maintenance workers in the villages at $20 per hour.
Many speakers thanked lawmakers for supporting the increase to the state’s per student funding, the base student allocation, last year, but said that state education funding still falls far short of what is needed.
“Every day we see the impact of not having enough resources for our education,” said Melina Pangiak, who testified with a classmate, Lucia Patrick, from the Chevak school in the Kashuniamut School District in Western Alaska.
The students spoke about the cuts to elective classes and learning opportunities. “Elective classes are more than just extra courses. They are where we discover what excites us and where we find talents and when we could discover our future paths,” Pangiak said.
“When these classes are cut or limited, it feels like doors are being closed on our potential,” Patrick added.
Students and school officials testified that there is a growing need for more school counselors and resources for mental health support.
“Our region recently experienced another suicide, which deeply affected our students and our only regional counselor,” said Kay Andrews, a school board member from the Southwest Region School District that includes eight schools spanning across the Bristol Bay region.
“Schools are more than our classrooms. They are community centers. They are safe places for our children, yet, schools are being asked to do more with less,” she said.
Some speakers pointed to bill proposals that lawmakers are considering this year as potential solutions. Some testified in support of House Bill 261, proposed this year by Rep. Andy Story, D-Juneau, that would redefine how districts calculate their student count to create more predictable budget estimates in the spring.
“It’s come to be a guessing game, almost, because we’re not sure how many students we’re going to have,” said Jack Strong, a board member from the Chatham School District, which serves four rural schools in Southeast Alaska. “It’s really hurting us in the long run, our children are not getting the education that they need, basically because of the way the paper shuffle is.”
Speakers also expressed support for state pension reform, House Bill 78, currently being debated in the House Finance Committee, to help support recruitment and retention of teachers.
Students came with solutions as well: Maddie Bass, a sophomore at Juneau Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé testified to the stress of teachers struggling with low pay, and leaving to pursue other jobs with healthcare benefits. Following the hearing, Bass said she’d like to see the state generate more tax revenue from the millions of tourists that visit Alaska each year.
“I’m seeing the government turning to taxing Alaskans. They want to tax Alaskans more instead of taxing corporations, and I think that that is the wrong idea,” Bass said. “I think to bolster the education system in Alaska, it would be a good idea to tax the tourism industry or cruise ships more, instead of putting a further burden on Alaskans that are just trying to work, learn and live here in the state.”
