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I’m thrilled that the Alaska House of Representatives passed HB 69 yesterday, restoring $1,000 per student in Base Student Allocation (BSA) funding. If this legislation passes the Senate and becomes law, it will reduce class sizes and protect all programs (IGNITE, immersion, reading support) that will be eliminated if we don’t update the BSA.
This has been a collaborative and bipartisan process, and these are key provisions of the bill:
- Restore $1,000/student in BSA funding, which means we’d fix a little more than half the cut that education has endured since 2017.
- Ban cell phones during the school day (incorporating bill language that the Governor, Senator Wielechowski, and I each introduced).
- Codify open enrollment within districts, protecting neighborhood preference. This is consistent with existing open enrollment policy in Anchorage, and since it reaffirms public school choice and priority for neighborhood residents, I support it.
- Expand support for charter schools, while protecting local school boards’ ability to review and approve charter applications. Alaska has fantastic charter schools, and this language strikes the right balance of supporting charters while maintaining local input and control.
- Require the Governor to submit an education funding bill and that the legislature pass it by March 15, aligning our budget schedule with school districts. This is an example of a great idea from a Republican legislator, and I’m glad it is now in the bill.
- Require testing to measure progress of students, which if implemented correctly should address the problem of testing simply reflecting students’ socioeconomic status. This is admittedly a complicated subject to address in statute, but I’m very supportive of the intent of this language and expect it to be reviewed and refined in Senator Tobin’s education committee.
The Anchorage School Board worked closely with legislators to ensure their budget is transparent, accountable, and focuses funding in the classroom. Here’s how ASD will invest BSA funding if HB 69 passes, including the first reduction in class sizes in many years:
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