JUNEAU — Lawmakers in the Alaska Senate have introduced an omnibus education bill that would overhaul the administration of publicly funded homeschooling programs.
Senate Bill 277, introduced last week, would increase Alaska’s annual $1.3 billion public school budget by roughly $100 million by adjusting the annual budget for inflation, adding new reading proficiency grants and boosting spending on student transportation.
It would also make changes to the state’s subsidized homeschooling system, for which the bill drew swift criticism.
Under the bill, correspondence programs — which provide cash allotments to the families of homeschoolers each year — would receive tens of millions of dollars in additional annual funding, a change that homeschooling proponents have long sought. But the state would require that funding to be funneled through students’ home districts.
Advertisement
Alaska last year had over 24,000 students enrolled in more than 30 correspondence programs. Of those, nearly 16,000 students were enrolled in correspondence programs administered by districts other than the ones in which they resided.
Tens of millions of dollars in state funding are diverted annually to districts that administer statewide homeschooling programs.
Some educators have raised alarm over the diversion of public funds from students’ home districts, especially after correspondence programs grew in popularity during the coronavirus pandemic.
Under the Senate bill, the correspondence students’ funding would first flow to the districts in which they reside, which would then be required to enter into cooperative agreements with the districts that administer the correspondence programs.
Under these agreements, the home district would retain a percentage of the students’ funding to pay for administrative costs, as well as additional costs for students to access other in-person classes or services, such as sports teams.
Advertisement
The bill could potentially increase funding substantially in districts where thousands of correspondence students live, including in Anchorage, Fairbanks, the Matanuska-Susitna Borough and the Kenai Peninsula.
The bill would increase overall state spending on education by $100 million annually, including a $25 million increase in per-student formula funding for correspondence students; $4.8 million for student transportation costs; and $22 million for grants to incentivize reading proficiency. The bill would include a modest increase to per-student formula funding, raising the Base Student Allocation by about $125, from $6,660 to roughly $6,785.
The proposed funding boost is meant to keep up with inflation, said Sen. Löki Tobin, an Anchorage Democrat and chair of the Senate Education Committee. Inflation-adjusted spending on education has dropped in the past decade.
Sen. Löki Tobin, D-Anchorage, right, listens during a Senate majority news conference at the Alaska State Capitol in Juneau on Jan. 20. (Marc Lester / ADN)
Even after the Legislature pushed through last year’s $175 million education funding increase, school districts across the state face multimillion-dollar budget deficits going into next school year. The Anchorage School District, in response to a $90 million deficit, passed a budget last month including school closures, increased class sizes and cuts to staff.
Correspondence funding a central debate
Some of the most substantial and controversial changes in the bill are around how correspondence programs are funded.
Correspondence programs originated in the state’s territorial days, when students in remote areas would correspond with educators in a central program by mail. The system today allows students from across the state to enroll in district-run homeschool programs, and receive an annual allotment of public funds to cover educational materials, classes and activities.
Advertisement
Homeschooling programs have faced increased scrutiny in recent years after a lawsuit challenged the use of correspondence allotments to cover the cost of tuition in Christian private schools. That litigation is ongoing.
The bill’s changes would apply, for instance, to Galena City School District’s IDEA, the state’s largest correspondence program. IDEA enrolls more than 7,000 students across the state, ranking Galena among some of the largest districts across the state, measured by attendance. As of last school year, only one of those students lived in Galena, a village of roughly 500 residents.
At a Senate Education Committee meeting Wednesday, Tobin said that requiring correspondence students to enroll in the district where they live addresses concerns from school districts that offer services for those students but are struggling to keep their facilities and services open — making choices between whether they close pools or cut middle school sports, for example.
“The hope for this is to continue to support our brick-and-mortar schools and then also recognize that they are also providing services, sometimes, to students who aren’t enrolled in their district, and to ensure that there is no loss of that ability to continue to offer those services or any costs that shifted onto the family,” Tobin said.
Tobin said increasing the BSA for correspondence students, alongside funneling more money into students’ home districts, would allow for those students to continue their state-funded correspondence education while utilizing services and programs offered by their local school district.
Advertisement
In its first week, however, the bill has garnered significant pushback from correspondence families and programs,many of whom asserted the bill is a threat to their programs.
Galena City School District superintendent Jason Johnson said he believes the bill poses an existential threat to correspondence programs. While there is an 8% cap on administrative fees in the bill, he said the lack of a cap on fees levied for education services leaves local districts able to charge unchecked amounts from correspondence students’ BSAs.
In an email to IDEA families supplied by Tobin’s office, Johnson called for parents to write to lawmakers in opposition to the bill, stating that if SB 277 remains, “most Alaskan statewide correspondence programs will sink and Alaskan families will suffer the loss of Alaska’s current robust school choice options.”
Tobin in an interview Thursday contested the presumption that local districts can charge correspondence programs 100% of state funding, calling it “ill-placed.”
Shepointed to the requirement for a collaborative agreement, a process overseen by the state education department, that she said would stop local districts from taking more than would be needed to cover costs of what correspondence students utilize at the local district.
Advertisement
North Pole resident Kendra Piper, parent of a correspondence student, testified in opposition to the bill Wednesday. She said that more than just the dollar amount, the bill ties correspondence students closer to the school districts they’ve stepped away from.
“SB 277 shifts funding and control back towards the very districts that many families like mine have chosen to leave. Even if it’s described as a small change, the reality is that it weakens the idea that funding should follow the student fully,” Piper said.
Sen. Rob Yundt, a Wasilla Republican and Education Committee member who took part in drafting the bill, said part of his support for the bill is rooted in the increasing per-student state funding for correspondence students.
“For a long time, folks have wanted to see this increase,” Yundt said. “I don’t think anybody wants to hear that their child’s not a whole child, that they’re only 90% of a child.”
Senate Education Committee member Jesse Kiehl, a Juneau Democrat, took issue with that characterization.
Advertisement
“What we do here in this section we’re talking about is pump additional cash into providing correspondence study. That’s a policy decision the Legislature may make, but it’s got nothing to do with the value of a child,” Kiehl said.
Kiehl questioned whether it costs the same amount to fund education for a homeschooled student as a brick-and-mortar school student.
“Are we paying the amount we need to educate the child in that way?” he said.
Yundt said at the Wednesday meeting that the committee is already weighing feedback to draft another version of the legislation.
Tobin told reporters earlier this week that the bill represents perspectives from both caucuses.
Advertisement
Tobin implied that, in working with the Senate minority and the House, she hopes the bill will garner enough support to withstand a potential governor’s veto.
Yundt told reporters earlier this month that correspondence funding and reading grants were two top priorities for the minority.
House Minority Whip Justin Ruffridge, a Soldotna Republican, said Thursday that he has not yet reviewed the bill.
Jeff Turner, a spokesperson for Gov. Mike Dunleavy, said the governor had no comment on the bill at this time.
House bills call for broader funding
Other bills in the Legislature this session seek to increase funding streams for Alaska public schools, including raising per-student funding and changing how and when attendance is calculated.
Advertisement
The House Education Committee introduced a bill earlier this month to increase the state’s per-student funding for schools.
House Bill 374 seeks to increase the Base Student Allocation by $630, an increase from $6,660 to $7,290 per student per year. That amounts to an estimated $158 million increase in yearly funding.
House Education Co-Chair Rebecca Himschoot, a Sitka independent, said lawmakersarrived at the $630 BSA increase by calculating what the five largest school districts by student count would need to have a balanced budget for fiscal year 2027.
Ruffridge was one of 10 minority members to vote to override the governor’s veto of the education formula boost last year. A member of the joint task force on education funding, he said he’s skeptical that the Legislature will have the same drive to get another similarly sized increase on the books this year.
“From my perspective, having been a part of the group that supported the largest BSA increase in Alaska history, I know that the efforts that we made to get there were extensive, and, you know, my sense of where we’re at right now is that it will be very difficult to repeat anything like that again,” Ruffridge said in an interview earlier this month.
Advertisement
Another House bill seeks a different change to the education formula calculation.
Schools receive state funding based on the average daily membership of their school. That number is typically not finalized until the fall, leaving districts unsure how much money they will be getting from the state until just before the school year begins.
HB 261 aims to make education funding more predictable, says its sponsor, Juneau Democratic Rep. Andi Story, co-chair of the HouseEducation Committee.
It would allow school districts to calculate their average daily membership based on the average from the last three years, or the most recent known student count period.
That bill would cost the state an estimated $147 million per year.
Advertisement
Daily News reporter Iris Samuels contributed from Anchorage.
The Alaska Senate Finance committee advanced a draft capital budget on Tuesday that would put nearly $250 million toward state facilities and maintenance projects next year.
The draft budget adds $88 million to Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s proposed capital budget of $159 million, with the largest additions going toward K-12 schools and university facilities maintenance.
That was a focused effort by the finance committee, said co-chair Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, who called funding for education facilities maintenance a “heavy concentration” on Wednesday.
Advertisement
Earlier this year, students and school officials testified to lawmakers that decades of deferred maintenance has reached crisis levels — with many rural school districts in particular grappling with deteriorating facilities, failing water and sewer systems — which they say is degrading student and staff morale. Lawmakers have expressed support and increased funding in recent years, but point to Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s history of vetoes as a roadblock for funding education.
The Senate draft includes $57.8 million in additional funding toward K-12 school maintenance through the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development and $17 million toward the University of Alaska. It also includes $5.7 million for the Alaska Court System’s facilities and $8 million for community infrastructure and workforce development programs through the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community, and Economic Development.
The Legislature relies on state ranked lists to prioritize where to direct funding to capital projects for K-12 schools, the university system and the court system.
For K-12 schools, the state’s current major maintenance list totals over $400 million needed for 103 school projects and repairs. Stedman said he recognized this year’s capital budget will only fund a fraction of those.
“Hopefully we get a quarter of it done, or something like that, but it’d be nice to retire the entire list,” Stedman said.
Advertisement
The draft budget would fund the top 15 school projects on the list, plus funds for three other schools in need of emergency fuel tank repairs. The top projects range from roof and boiler replacements to septic systems, fire suppression and safety upgrades in schools from Fairbanks to the Aleutian Islands.
In order to distribute funds more widely, members of the finance committee reduced funding for one project in Galena, in the Western Interior of Alaska, from roughly $35 million to $5 million for renovations to the Sydney C. Huntington Elementary and High Schools. They also allocated $17 million towards rebuilding the school in Stebbins in Western Alaska, after it burned down in 2024.
The Senate draft also adds nearly $14 million in funding for the state-run Mt. Edgecumbe High School, which has been the focus of public attention and concern after a quarter of students disenrolled this year. The additional facilities dollars include $10 million to remodel the dining hall, $3.1 million to replace dorm windows, $460,000 to replace dorm furniture, $50,000 to replace mattresses and $125,000 to replace aging laundry machines.
Finance members added $17 million to fund the top nine projects across the University of Alaska system — three projects each within the three major campuses.
Sen. Jesse Kiehl, D-Juneau, serves on the finance committee and his district includes University of Alaska Southeast. He described the proposed funds as a “nickel” compared to the “colossal” deferred maintenance needs of the university system.
Advertisement
“That’s been built by Legislatures and Boards of Regents for 40 years,” he said on Wednesday, adding that it is a shared responsibility to put funding towards repairs and upgrades.
“The Constitution makes them a separate body within the executive branch that puts a lot of responsibility on them, too, more than the general state government,” he said “So university major maintenance is its own huge problem.”
The draft budget also includes $5.7 million for upgrades to state court facilities, mostly targeted to Anchorage and Sitka. It contains nearly $10 million for workforce development programs geared at the construction and oil and gas sectors, including for the Fairbanks Pipeline Training Center and Alaska Vocational Technical Center in Seward.
An amendment to add $25 million to the draft budget for the Port of Anchorage, sponsored by Sen. Kelly Merrick, R-Eagle River, was voted down on Tuesday by a 5 to 2 vote.
Before voting against the proposal, finance co-chair Sen. Lyman Hoffman, D-Bethel, said during committee deliberations the priority this year is to fund as many school maintenance projects on the list as possible, saying “schools are falling apart” and must be maintained to prevent further deterioration.
Advertisement
“Students that are trying to learn deserve better,” Hoffman said. “And if we are not able to provide this major maintenance, we are going to see these schools continue to crumble, and the financial burden to the state of Alaska will be hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild schools.”
More funding for school maintenance and other capital projects could be added by the Alaska House of Representatives, who will take up the draft budget bill after it’s approved by the Senate in the coming weeks.
Two US soldiers were wounded by a brown bear during a training exercise in Alaska on Thursday, the US Army stated.
Anchorage Daily News reported that the soldiers were from the 11th Airborne Division, and that the exercise had been a “land navigation training event” near Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.
State wildlife officials said that the bear attack seemed to be a defensive one, from a bear which had recently emerged from its den. Staff members from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game collected evidence at the scene in an attempt to learn more about the bear, such as its species and gender.
“The incident is currently under investigation, and we are working closely with installation authorities and local wildlife officials to gather all relevant information and ensure the safety of all personnel in the area,” the 11th Airborne Division said in a statement, reported ABC News.
Advertisement
ABC News also cited an 11th Airborne Division spokesperson, Lt.-Col. Jo Nederhoed, who said that the two soldiers had been seriously wounded, but were receiving care at a hospital in Anchorage, and had shown improvement by Saturday morning.
“We hope both individuals have a full and quick recovery, and our thoughts are with them during this time,” Fish and Game Regional Supervisor Cyndi Wardlow said in a statement reported by Anchorage Daily News. “In this case, having bear spray with them in the field may have saved their lives.”
Both of the soldiers reportedly had and used bear spray during the attack.
The bear’s condition and whereabouts are currently unknown.
Up, up and away … that’s where most travel prices are going.
It’s true. Not only are our nation’s geopolitical thrusts in the Mideast affecting the cost of your fill-ups, every component of your trip from airfares to car rentals and hotel stays are subject to price hikes.
Imagine filling up a jetliner with jet fuel that’s doubled in price. It’s enough to melt your credit card, regardless of the number of points you get for every dollar spent!
Because the price of oil affects everything, higher prices are eating away at your travel budget in many ways.
Advertisement
Bag fees
There’s lots of press on this. All airlines are increasing their checked-bag fees because of the jump in fuel prices.
Back in 2009, Alaska Airlines instituted a $15 fee for the first checked bag and $25 for the second bag. At the time, there was no charge for the first bag and a second bag was $25.
Last week, Alaska Airlines, along with other major airlines, increased its fees to $45 for the first checked bag and $55 for the second bag. Delta Air Lines charges the same.
Even if the cost of oil comes down, I don’t expect bag fees will ever be reduced.
Travelers who live in Alaska are somewhat insulated from the new hikes because both Delta and Alaska Airlines offer two free checked bags, with conditions:
Advertisement
1. Alaska offers two free checked bags for travelers flying to or from Alaska who are enrolled in Club 49. This does not affect other flights on Alaska. Separately, ATMOS credit card holders can get a free checked bag. Also, elite members of the ATMOS scheme get one or two free checked bags systemwide.
2. Delta offers two free checked bags for travelers flying to or from Alaska who are SkyMiles members who live in Alaska. Again, this does not apply to other Delta flights. Separately, Delta American Express cardholders can get a free checked bag.
3. Elite-level travelers with the oneworld airline cartel, including Alaska Airlines, can get one or two checked bags on American, British Airways, Japan Airlines, Qantas or other oneworld carriers.
[Anchorage’s international airport rolls out self-driving wheelchairs]
Main Cabin vs. Basic Economy
The spread between the lowest available price, Basic Economy, and a more flexible ticket, Main Cabin, has increased. While the difference used to be $20-$30 each way when the Basic Economy scheme was introduced in 2018, the round-trip upcharge now can exceed $100.
Advertisement
For example, the lowest Basic fare to Portland is $337 round-trip on Alaska Airlines. The upcharge to Main Cabin, with full loyalty points, pre-assigned seats and more flexibility on changes and cancellations, is $447, a 33% upcharge.
This trend is not specifically attributable to the new Iran War. It’s just a cost that continues to rise.
New fees
I’m impressed at the creativity of airline people who dream up new fees. Here are some of my favorites from Alaska Airlines:
1. Phone reservations: $15
2. Partner award booking fee: $12.50
Advertisement
3. Pet travel fee: $100 in the cabin, $200 in the baggage compartment with a kennel
4. Left on board item return fee: $20
On Condor Airlines, operating the only nonstop service from Anchorage to Europe, travelers can choose from four different bundles in economy class. The least-expensive, Economy Zero, from $840 round-trip, features fees for travelers:
1. Carry-on bag fee, up to 8kg: $35; a small bag like a purse always is included for free
2. Checked bag: $75
Advertisement
3. Airport check-in: $30
All three of these fees are included in the next-highest fare bucket, Economy Classic, from $900 round-trip. It’s cheaper to buy the bundle than it is to buy the components a la carte. Seat assignments are additional, from $25 for economy.
Airfares on the rise
There are a few good deals available for travel to select West Coast/Intermountain destinations in May, including:
1. Anchorage-San Francisco on Alaska Airlines, from $307 round-trip. Fly May 15-28 only. Add $90 round-trip for Main cabin.
2. Anchorage-Los Angeles on Alaska Airlines, from $317 round-trip. May 15-25 only. Add $90 round-trip for Main.
Advertisement
3. Anchorage-Phoenix on United, Delta or Alaska, from $267-$287 round-trip. Fly May 8-June 9 only. Add $90-$100 for Main.
4. Anchorage-Denver $357 round-trip on Delta. Fly May 8-June 9 only. Add $90 round-trip for Main.
For travel to other destinations, or later in the summer, be prepared to pay more.
Flying to Hawaii? Alaska Air’s nonstop prices out at $706 round-trip between May 30 and June 6. Add $110 round-trip for Main.
Nonstop flights from Anchorage to Salt Lake City start at $669 round-trip with Delta on May 17. That’s $100 more than the cost for the same flights last month. Add $90 more for Main.
Advertisement
Hotel costs continue to rise, accompanied by pesky resort fees.
The Outrigger on the Beach in Waikiki is a very nice beachfront hotel. It’s not plush, or the nicest property. But it’s solid. The cost is $334 per night.
But there’s more: a $50 per night resort fee, plus a variety of taxes and charges, totaling $112.55 per night.
Down in Seattle, the Sound Hotel in the Belltown neighborhood is marketed by Hilton. The discounted rate for “Honors” members — it’s free to join — is $313.34 per night for a king room in late May. Taxes and fees add an extra $56.40 per night.
There’s no appreciable bump yet for hotel rates as a result of the oil price surge. Yet. But if these hotel rates seem high, they’re in line with hotel rates in Anchorage this summer. At the Sheraton in Anchorage in June, it’s $450 per night, plus $54 in taxes and fees, when booked at Expedia.
Advertisement
Car rentals are not cheap
My go-to site for car rentals is the Costco site, which compares major brands and automatically includes Costco discounts.
In Las Vegas, for a one-day rental in May, Budget charges $67 per day, which includes taxes and fees of $22.77. In Anchorage, the same kind of car, medium SUV, costs $92.97 with Alamo.
The biggest differences so far in car rental rates seems to be the bill you’ll pay when you fill up the tank before returning. There’s no appreciable jump in prices because of the new war.
When it comes to making travel arrangements for the spring and summer, it’s more risky making completely non-refundable arrangements.
I made the decision to purchase most of my summer travel plans in advance, but only after determining I would not need to change the dates. Particularly with airline tickets, it’s expensive to change your dates.
Advertisement
There’s lots of uncertainty regarding travel arrangements, particularly international travel. As fuel prices go up due to oil shortages, travel companies will look for ways to recoup the increased costs. In most cases, those higher costs will be borne by travelers.
