Alaska
Both sides of Alaska homeschool case want programs in place, disagree over how it should happen • Alaska Beacon
The administration of Gov. Mike Dunleavy and plaintiffs in a court case whose outcome struck down key components of Alaska’s homeschool programs have different ideas for how to get families who use those programs through the next year.
Earlier this month, Anchorage Superior Court Judge Adolf Zeman ruled that the law allowing the state to distribute payments to the parents of homeschooled students is unconstitutional. That left families who use the program to navigate uncertain terrain as they finish out this academic year and plan for the next.
For that reason, attorneys on both sides of the case have requested that the courts put the ruling on hold. Such holds are called stays. But where the state has filed for an indefinite stay on the court’s ruling, the plaintiffs ask the court to limit a stay to two months. The Anchorage School District, the state’s largest, filed a friend of the court brief supporting the plaintiffs; three people whose families use the programs filed a response in support of the state.
The state’s request would retain the aspects of Alaska law Zeman found unconstitutional until a higher court weighs in on his decision.
Plaintiffs were willing to compromise, said their attorney, Scott Kendall. They offered to expedite the state’s appeal and help get legislation passed to fix the unconstitutional language in state law. They also offered to agree to the longer stay the state requested if it passed emergency regulations that keep the correspondence program running, but restrict spending on private school education. That is, Alaska families would not be able to offset private school costs with state funds, but could still purchase curriculum and textbooks with state money. Kendall drafted an example of such regulations.
The state declined the plaintiffs’ offer through its attorney.
“At this point, the state plans to see how the stay proceedings play out in the courts, before deciding how best to address any problems that may remain once the trial court and the Supreme Court have weighed in on the stay,” wrote Margaret Paton-Walsh, the chief of the special litigation section within the Alaska Department of Law.
The state’s request for a stay emphasizes the harm correspondence families will experience without one and that the judge’s ruling means correspondence programs would not be able to operate at all.
“For decades, the State has offered correspondence schools as one of the options for Alaskan students in furtherance of its constitutional duty to provide for education,” Paton-Walsh wrote in the stay request. “Wrongfully removing that educational option—even temporarily—irreparably harms both the State’s education system and the children within it.”
Kendall said the state’s argument is disingenuous and that it is clear the ruling does not end the entire correspondence program.
“The only part that they are holding up on is the part that is so clearly unconstitutional,” he said. “I believe they’re trying to manufacture a crisis around the correspondence schools in order to get what they really want, which is to tear out part of our Constitution: the direct benefit clause, which prohibits spending public funds at private schools.”
Kendall said the administration refused a compromise that would maintain the correspondence programs while meeting the constitution’s requirements.
“If that’s where they’re at, then they’re not arguing with me,” Kendall said. “They’re arguing with the founders who wrote Alaska’s constitution, and that’s not a winning legal argument.”
To change the constitution would take approval from two-thirds of both legislative bodies and a public vote in favor.
The state asked for a decision by May 2, but the judge’s decision could come at any time.
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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Rabbi Josef Greenberg and Esty Greenberg of Alaska Jewish Campus, joined Alaska’s News Source to explain more about Hanukkah and how Anchorage can celebrate.
They will be hosting Chanukah, The Festival of Lights for “Cirque De Hanukkah,” on Sunday, Dec. 29, at 5 p.m., at the Egan Center.
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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – A variety of winter weather will move through Alaska as we go through Christmas Day and the first night of Hannukah.
A high wind warning started Christmas Eve for Ketchikan, Sitka, and surrounding locations for southeast winds 30-40, gusting to 60 miles per hour. Warnings for the combination of strong winds and snow go to the west coast, western Brooks Range, and Bering Strait.
Anchorage is seeing a low-snow Christmas. December usually sees 18 inches of snow throughout the month. December 2024 has only garnered a paltry 1.5 inches. Snow depth in the city is 7 inches, even though we have seen over 28 inches for the season. A rain-snow mix is likely to hit Prince William Sound, mostly in the form of rain.
A cool-down will start in the interior tomorrow, and that colder air will slip southward. By Friday, the southcentral region will see the chances of snow increase as the temperatures decrease.
The hot spot for Alaska on Christmas Eve was Sitka with 48 degrees. The coldest spot was Atqasuk with 23 degrees below zero.
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YAKUTAT, Alaska — Forget the open-air sleigh overloaded with gifts and powered by flying reindeer.
Santa and Mrs. Claus this week took supersized rides to southeast Alaska in a C-17 military cargo plane and a camouflaged Humvee, as they delivered toys to the Tlingit village of Yakutat, northwest of Juneau.
The visit was part of this year’s Operation Santa Claus, an outreach program of the Alaska National Guard to largely Indigenous communities in the nation’s largest state. Each year, the Guard picks a village that has suffered recent hardship — in Yakutat’s case, a massive snowfall that threatened to buckle buildings in 2022.
“This is one of the funnest things we get to do, and this is a proud moment for the National Guard,” Maj. Gen. Torrence Saxe, adjutant general of the Alaska National Guard, said Wednesday.
Saxe wore a Guard uniform and a Santa hat that stretched his unit’s dress regulations.
The Humvee caused a stir when it entered the school parking lot, and a buzz of “It’s Santa! It’s Santa!” pierced the cold air as dozens of elementary school children gathered outside.
In the school, Mrs. Claus read a Christmas story about the reindeer Dasher. The couple in red then sat for photos with nearly all of the 75 or so students and handed out new backpacks filled with gifts, books, snacks and school supplies donated by the Salvation Army. The school provided lunch, and a local restaurant provided the ice cream and toppings for a sundae bar.
Student Thomas Henry, 10, said while the contents of the backpack were “pretty good,” his favorite item was a plastic dinosaur.
Another, 9-year-old Mackenzie Ross, held her new plush seal toy as she walked around the school gym.
“I think it’s special that I have this opportunity to be here today because I’ve never experienced this before,” she said.
Yakutat, a Tlingit village of about 600 residents, is in the lowlands of the Gulf of Alaska, at the top of Alaska’s panhandle. Nearby is the Hubbard Glacier, a frequent stop for cruise ships.
Some of the National Guard members who visited Yakutat on Wednesday were also there in January 2022, when storms dumped about 6 feet of snow in a matter of days, damaging buildings.
Operation Santa started in 1956 when flooding severely curtailed subsistence hunting for residents of St. Mary’s, in western Alaska. Having to spend their money on food, they had little left for Christmas presents, so the military stepped in.
This year, visits were planned to two other communities hit by flooding. Santa’s visit to Circle, in northeastern Alaska, went off without a hitch. Severe weather prevented a visit to Crooked Creek, in the southwestern part of the state, but Christmas was saved when the gifts were delivered there Nov. 16.
“We tend to visit rural communities where it is very isolated,” said Jenni Ragland, service extension director with the Salvation Army Alaska Division. “A lot of kids haven’t traveled to big cities where we typically have Santa and big stores with Christmas gifts and Christmas trees, so we kind of bring the Christmas program on the road.”
After the C-17 Globemaster III landed in Yakutat, it quickly returned to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, an hour away, because there was nowhere to park it at the village’s tiny airport. Later, it returned to pick up the Christmas crew.
Santa and Mrs. Claus, along with their tuckered elves, were seen nodding off on the flight back.
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