For the second year in a row, Gov. Mike Dunleavy has successfully vetoed a bill including a permanent increase to the base student allocation, the amount of funding each school district receives per student. On Tuesday, an attempt to override the veto failed on a 33-27 margin, seven votes short of the needed 40 to override.
Sen. Jesse Bjorkman, R-Nikiski, voted in favor of the override, while his fellow Kenai Peninsula legislators, Rep. Justin Ruffridge, R-Soldotna; Rep. Sarah Vance, R-Homer; and Rep. Bill Elam, R-Nikiski, all voted to support the veto.
The governor last week said he vetoed House Bill 69 because it didn’t include any policy changes and because of the state’s “deteriorated” revenue outlook. The bill had included policy considerations championed by the governor when it first cleared the State House, before being stripped back to include only a single $1,000 permanent increase to the BSA before it cleared the Senate.
On Tuesday, Bjorkman was the only Kenai Peninsula legislator who spoke. He said Alaska’s schools can’t meet their mission because they don’t have the money they need. As school funding has fallen behind the needs of the state’s schools, he said, classes have gotten larger and opportunities that bring kids to school have withered away.
As the Alaska Legislature met Tuesday to consider the veto override, the finance committee of the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District’s Board of Education was meeting in Soldotna to add more cuts to its proposed budget, which it has to advance to the Kenai Peninsula Borough by the end of this month.
Under the preliminary budget proposal advanced by the committee for consideration by the full board on Wednesday, which assumes a $680 increase to the BSA, the KPBSD will close Sterling Elementary and Nikolaevsk School, shed staff and slash programs to reduce spending and overcome a steep deficit.
The funding in HB 69, Bjorkman said, is money to keep schools open, to keep class sizes down, and to preserve opportunities for Alaska students.
“We need to hold students to a high standard,” he said. “We need to invest in them and give them the tools they need to succeed.”
Ruffridge wrote on Facebook shortly after the vote that while he and “almost everyone” in the Legislature is ready to increase the BSA, the final version of HB 69 lacked the compromise necessary to cross the finish line. That means, he writes, a combination of funding and reform policy.
“While this circus played out in Juneau, our KPBSD school board members are back home, making brutal decisions just to keep schools afloat,” he wrote. “I haven’t given up … Let’s do the hard work of governing. Alaska’s future depends on it.”
Elam spoke similarly in a statement provided to the Clarion. He said that he was disappointed by the Legislature’s failure to come together on education funding, where he says a solution combining funding and policy is “desperately” needed. He said he wants to see an increase to education funding made this session, but that the work has been derailed by the politicization of the issue.
“I am hopeful that we can now come together and use our time wisely to bring meaningful legislation and funding across the finish line,” he writes.
Vance did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
Some other lawmakers said they didn’t support the increase in funding because they feared for the state’s ability to pay for the increase over time. Others speaking in favor of overriding said that the state has fallen behind its responsibilities to fund education, as inflation has eroded significantly the buying power of Alaska schools since 2011.
Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka and one of the chairs of the Senate Finance Committee, voted against the override but said a funding increase for Alaska schools is necessary and suggested a return to the $680 increase provided as one-time money last year.
Dunleavy on Tuesday introduced his own education bill that includes a $560 increase to the BSA and several of his own priorities, including expansions to open enrollment to allow students to attend school districts outside of the area they reside and new policies to make it easier to open charter schools. The bill hadn’t been scheduled for a hearing as of that evening.
A full recording of the joint legislative session to consider the veto override can be found at ktoo.org/gavel.
This story was updated Tuesday, April 22, to add comment received from Rep. Elam.
Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.
