Alaska Senate prepares to vote on public education funding boost as Dunleavy vows veto

The Alaska Senate will vote as soon as Friday on legislation that seeks to permanently increase K-12 public school funding, but Gov. Mike Dunleavy has vowed to veto the bill if it passes as currently written.

On Thursday morning, the Senate Finance Committee approved a modified version of House Bill 69, which would increase the base student allocation — the core of the state’s per-student public school funding formula — by $1,000 per student.

School districts and public school advocates have testified for years that state funding, which has been kept flat amid rising inflation, is inadequate and has caused extensive cuts that hurt student performance.

The bill is a top priority for the multipartisan majorities in both the House and Senate.

If the new formula is fully funded by legislators and the governor, the effect would be an additional $253 million per year for public education.

The state House has already approved a version of the bill, meaning that if the Senate approves it, members of the House would be asked to approve the Senate’s version or send the bill to a conference committee to negotiate a compromise.

In a statement posted on social media, Dunleavy called the bill’s present form “a joke,” adding, “Unless it is amended to address needed policies, if this lands on my desk, it’ll be vetoed immediately.”

If the governor vetoes the bill as promised, it would take 40 of 60 legislators, meeting in joint session, to override him. Multiple legislators said that as of Thursday, the necessary votes were not present.

“I do not believe in its current form, it will get through the process,” said Sen. Shelley Hughes, R-Palmer.

Some legislators, including Senate Minority Leader Mike Shower, R-Wasilla, suggested that a smaller increase, on the order of $680 per student, might find success if coupled with policy changes.

The bill advancing toward a Senate vote was introduced at the start of the legislative session by Rep. Rebecca Himschoot, I-Sitka, after Dunleavy vetoed a different bill, with a smaller funding increase, last year. Lawmakers failed to override the governor’s veto by a single vote.

Himschoot’s bill was repeatedly modified, and lawmakers held closed-door negotiating sessions with a representative of the Dunleavy administration in an effort to find a compromise between legislators’ preferences and the governor’s.

Most legislators have supported an unrestricted funding boost, which would allow school districts to choose how to spend the new money. The governor has introduced bills that place more emphasis on policy and would empower charter schools, homeschool parents, and alternatives to traditional schools.

The closed-door negotiations ended without success, and the House passed a bill focused on new funding. The Senate Education Committee amended that proposal to include policy items, a step toward the governor’s preferences, but in a statement, the governor said that version of the bill “does not pass muster.”

Rather than try further modifications, the Senate Finance Committee acted Thursday to strip all policy measures from the bill and leave just the funding increase.

“There’s a lot of discussion on what level of funding the BSA should have,” said Sen. Lyman Hoffman, D-Bethel and co-chair of the finance committee.

“We’re putting this forward to see what support there is on this funding level in this building and on the third floor,” he said, referring to the Capitol floor occupied by the governor’s office.

Sen. James Kaufman, R-Anchorage, objected to that line of thinking, saying that the bill must have more support than its failed predecessor from last year, Senate Bill 140.

“I just want to say on the record that if we’re going to get something done, it’s going to have to be a thoughtful compromise that is durable, that hopefully the governor and the (House) will accept to the degree that it has as many — I’ll say friends, supporters — plus one more — at least — than we had with SB 140, which unfortunately failed,” Kaufman said.

“And so I’m afraid we’re going down the path to failure.”