Alaska Senate bill spurs debate over funding of homeschool programs

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

She pointed 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.

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.

“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.

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.

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 lawmakers arrived 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.

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 House Education 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.

Daily News reporter Iris Samuels contributed from Anchorage.