Freshmen lawmakers focus on schools

JUNEAU — Before House Rep. Lynn Gattis and Sen. Mike Dunleavy arrived in Juneau two years ago, the words charter school and home schooling hardly led the discussion on education.

Today, the heavier emphasis placed on these programs when it comes to funding can, in part, be attributed to these two former Mat-Su Borough School Board members, who left their borough seats for bigger offices in the state capital.

They closed out their first session giving the borough a loud voice on funding education under the buzzword “choice,” which critics called a back door to a controversial voucher system.

Both lawmakers sat on a committee assembled to hammer out differences between the House and Senate’s version of House Bill 278, Gov. Sean Parnell’s education funding bill worth $300 million over the next three years.

The merits of the bill, designed to bring charter and home schools further into the fold, will be closely watched and has already become an election issue in some House races.

Gattis, a Wasilla Republican, spent her first two years serving as the House Education Committee chair. She said the HB 278 ultimately lays a foundation for further discussion on giving credence to the value of charter schools.

The bill provides incentives for these schools, including:

• lowering the minimum number of students required for 95 percent funding from 120 to 75;

• providing a $500, one-time credit per student for start-up schools;

• increasing funding for correspondence study from 80 percent to 90 percent of the base student allocation.

It’s a start, Gattis said.

“We have raised the level of conversation specifically to charter schools,” she said.

“I think we raised the level of what charter schools do, what they get financially, what they give, and the opportunities they allow parents to have.”

Meanwhile, Dunleavy had a seat on the Senate Finance Committee while pushing for a prospective constitutional change on how public funds are used to finance education.

He didn’t have enough support to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would allow the state to use public funds for private and religious schools. But Senate Finance Committee co-chair Kevin Meyer said Dunleavy, a former educator and school administrator, brought a deeper understanding of how education systems work throughout the state.

“He’s still educating, if you ask me,” Meyer said. “He’s been in education all of his life. He’s educating us on what its like in the classroom and as a superintendent in Kotzebue and rural areas, what it’s like to work with the unions.

“He’s looking for new and different ways for kids to learn, and in his mind that’s not necessarily the traditional classroom.”

Dunleavy said a broader understanding of education is needed for ensuing legislative sessions.

“I don’t approach education the same way as my peers; I just don’t,” Dunleavy said. “I see education as something different than schooling. Education is the transformative process that happens with any human being. Schooling is the process that takes place on a mass scale with systems and programs.”

The stronger emphasis on charter schools, however, has come at the expense of traditional public schools, according to some lawmakers and the advocacy group Great Alaska Schools.

They say HB 278 failed to directly provide enough funding for the base student allocation, a complex state formula the state uses to determine how much to spend per student.

That sits at $5,680 per student. HB 278 provides $150 million next year and $50 million in each of the next two years. That’s not enough and will produce job cuts each of the next three years, the group says.

“That did not come close to meeting needs to most every district in the state,” said Alyse Galvin of Great Alaska Schools, a grassroots organization that touts a membership of more than 1,500 parents and teachers statewide.

The group sought $400 per student next year and $125 in each of the next two years.

“We’ve got some work to do,” Galvin said. “We’re not giving up.”

Dunleavy and Gattis say job cuts lie within respective school districts and their boards.

“Why are they losing their jobs?” Dunleavy asked. “We didn’t fire them at the legislative level. The foundation formula is merely a method to be as fair as possible in a geographically large state. We have to have a deeper dialogue on this issue.”

That starts in the interim.

The Legislature also funded studies looking at how money gets, and should be, distributed through such a geographically diverse state.

“This buys us time to actually explore these things in detail,” Dunleavy said in addressing his committee colleagues. “They only thing that I would ask folks is that they not be afraid of change.

“Not just say they aren’t afraid of change, but actually take a look at doing things differently,” he said. “I think in the end, it will serve all of our kids well.”

Freelance reporter Steve Quinn is a veteran Alaska journalist who formerly covered state government for the Associated Press.