Senate committee strips homeschool funding overhaul from education bill, adds one-time ‘energy relief’ funding

JUNEAU — The Alaska Senate Education Committee on Monday replaced a school funding bill introduced in March with a new version that strips out a controversial overhaul of publicly funded homeschooling programs.

The new version instead would require more legislative oversight over Alaska’s correspondence education programs, and removes additional correspondence funding in favor of broader one-time education funding measures.

The bill now includes a $58 million one-time school energy relief payment to offset high fuel prices, and a bump to student transportation funding. It still includes incentive grants for districts where students improve reading proficiency under the Alaska Reads Act.

Sen. Löki Tobin, an Anchorage Democrat and chair of the Senate Education Committee that sponsored the bill, said that removing the most controversial parts of the bill — how correspondence programs are funded — makes the bill more straightforward.

“I think the part that was most infuriating was the mis- and disinformation that was promulgated by certain entities that the outreach we received would talk to components or pieces that weren’t in the legislation at all, or the legislation didn’t do what they were claiming it did,” she said in an interview Tuesday.

She said the “deep trove of mal-information” created a response and pushback she “was unwilling to continue to bear.”

The bill originally sought to funnel funding for homeschoolers through the school districts in which they reside, potentially with significant impacts to large correspondence programs that are administered by rural school districts. That funding change came alongside a 10% increase in per-student funding for correspondence students overall. Both of those elements are removed from the new version of the bill.

There are over 30 correspondence programs enrolling more than 24,000 students across Alaska, as of last year. More than half of those students were enrolled in correspondence programs administered by districts outside of the district where they reside.

That includes programs like IDEA, run by the Galena City School District, the state’s largest correspondence program. IDEA serves over 7,000 students statewide.

Superintendents and families of correspondence students pushed back against the original bill, saying that it represented an existential threat to correspondence programs. The bill received hundreds of letters and public testimony opposing the changes to correspondence funding.

The new version of the bill removes some of the bill’s most controversial aspects.

Jason Johnson, the superintendent of the Galena City School District, sent an email to IDEA families prior to the bill’s first hearing urging them to contact their representatives to oppose the bill and asserting that under the bill as written, correspondence programs would receive zero state funding.

Tobin said in an interview in March following the influx of opposition that the bill would not have diverted all state funding away from correspondence programs.

Johnson said as of Tuesday morning, he had not yet reviewed the new version of the bill.

Homeschool reporting requirements

The new version of the bill requires that Alaska school districts provide an annual report to the Legislature with details on the correspondence programs they operate, including how much money the district provides to students in the programs, how many students are in the programs, where those students live, what the allotments are used for, and more.

The new reporting requirements mirror those included in a 2024 bill that called for a one-time report to the Legislature on correspondence allotment spending.

At the time, state spending on homeschooled students was scrutinized following litigation challenging a practice by some Alaska families — including that of former Attorney General Treg Taylor — to subsidize tuition in private Christian schools using public correspondence school allotments.

Tobin said last year that the 2024 report revealed there is “just a lot we don’t know about how public dollars are being used.”

A much larger percentage of students in non-correspondence schools take AK STAR state standardized tests compared to those in correspondence programs. Correspondence programs often see lower graduation rates than standard public schools in Alaska.

Families whose students are enrolled in IDEA, for example, receive an allotment of $2,700 per student per year, according to IDEA’s website. There is little clarity or government oversight on how that money can be spent. A pending lawsuit will answer whether or not correspondence allotments can cover the cost of tuition at a private school.

Tobin says these discrepancies and outstanding questions call for more state oversight on correspondence programs.

“We’re asking for all that information because it’s difficult, as we’ve learned, to create good public policy that helps support our correspondence students, if we don’t have the information that is needed to inform how that policy is created,” Tobin said.

Education funding prospects

The committee substitute to the Senate bill also cuts the $125 increase to the state’s annual per-student formula funding, intended as inflation-proofing in the bill’s original version, which would have raised the Base Student Allocation from $6,660 to roughly $6,785.

Tobin said removing the increase to annual per-student funding in favor of a one-time payment is more politically feasible in the Legislature this session.

“Whether it’s inflationary or it’s additional funds for this year, there is a disinterest in increasing the Base Student Allocation this cycle, and so we’re trying to figure out other ways that we can target funding and support students and communities and schools,” Tobin said Tuesday. It is unlikely that the Legislature can muster the votes needed to override a governor’s veto of additional education funding, she said.

Tobin also said she thinks one-time funding is more likely to get the governor’s signature. The Legislature narrowly voted last session to override Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of an increase in the Base Student Allocation.

But Alaska’s public schools still say they don’t have the money they need, with districts such as the Anchorage School District voting to close schools and reducing staff positions and programs to mitigate severe deficits.

The latest version of the Senate bill is in conflict with a spending plan adopted by the House this week.

The House operating budget calls for adding $147 million in one-time funding for K-12 school operations along with nearly $11 million in new funding for student transportation. The House figure, majority members say, is needed to make up for years of inflation.

That funding in the operating budget was included to guarantee some additional education funding this year. During debates on the House floor, members of the Republican minority repeatedly spoke out against one-time spending on education, including arguments that they wanted a more specific plan for how the funds would be used and that it could lead districts to expect funding to continue at that level in future years.

The Senate bill proposes to increase student transportation funding by roughly $15 million, distribute just under $59 million in energy relief payments to K-12 schools, and spend around $22 million on incentive payments for reading improvement.

All told, the Senate proposal calls for close to $100 million in new education spending, far below the amount identified by the House.

Daily News reporter Iris Samuels contributed to this report.