Legislature’s education task force to hear recommendations Thursday at Capitol

Groups representing school district administrators, board members, employees and municipal governments scheduled to give presentations about K-12 proposals

The Alaska State Capitol on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. (Mark Sabbatini / Juneau Independent)

By Mark Sabbatini

Juneau Independent

Highly expected recommendations such as better pay for teachers, along with some perhaps unexpected suggestions such as getting rid of the Alaska Reads Act, are set to be presented to the Legislature’s Task Force On Education Funding on Thursday at the state Capitol.

The meeting scheduled to start at 10 a.m. is the first in Juneau by the task force formed at the end of this year’s legislative session to conduct an 18-month assessment of the state’s education system scheduled to be completed in January of 2027. Many educators and lawmakers say schools are struggling due to being starved of funds for more than a decade, while Gov. Mike Dunleavy and like-minded supporters argue policy reforms including more support for charter/correspondence schools are needed.

State Rep. Andi Story, D-Juneau, said Wednesday the meeting is expected to last about three hours. Testimony will be limited to invited officials, although the public can offer feedback online via the Legislature’s website and email contacts. It will be broadcast live on Gavel Alaska.

Thursday’s meeting is scheduled to feature recommendations from groups representing school district administrators, board members, employees and municipal governments. Presentation documents posted at the Legislature’s website ahead of the meeting show plenty of familiar and overlapping suggestions, notably additional and reliable funding for core education functions.

A key component of that debate is the Base Student Allocation, which this year got a $700 increase to the $5,960 per-student allocation set in state statute after legislators overrode multiple vetoes by Dunleavy to funding hikes. Many education advocates say the increase is still far below the amount needed to adjust for inflation since 2011, when the BSA was $5,680.

Similar arguments in common are made for sufficient and stable employee compensation, facility maintenance and student program support — and all are continuations of arguments presented to lawmakers for many years.

But the presentations also branch into potentially significant policy and funding shifts. The Alaska Council of School Administrators, in making the unremarkable recommendation to "eliminate unfunded and underfunded initiatives," cites the Alaska Reads Act as its lone specific example. The act signed into law in 2022 intended to boost reading skills for students in grades K-3 has gotten bipartisan praise for some of its results, but concerns have been voiced by school district officials that not enough state funds are provided to cover the labor and material costs involved.

Story, who co-chairs the House Education Committee, said the current issue isn’t that the program should be repealed, but "there was quite a few things put in the Alaska Reads Act that we've never funded."

Another notable statement comes from the Alaska Municipal League, which "supports removing the cap on local government contributions." That would be a significant change from state policy — based on federal law — that limits the gap between districts with the most and least per-student funding. However, that policy is currently being hotly debated due to, among other factors, a state board of education proposal to impose stricter limits on municipal funds provided to districts for non-instructional purposes.

The AML presentation states it may be willing to support a lawsuit clarifying the state’s education funding responsibility under the Alaska Constitution. The organization also wants the state education department to "perform an assessment of the demand for charter schools and an assessment of the financial impacts to the public education system of opening new charter schools and Tribal compact schools."

An opening presentation is scheduled Thursday by Marshall Lind, the state’s education commissioner from 1971 to 1983 and 1986 to 87.

"He's got such a great history on education funding and how it came to be," Story said, noting he presided over major changes such as the Molly Hootch case during the 1970s that led to a decree committing the government to building local high schools in Native communities throughout Alaska.

• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.