Education

A group of state lawmakers is set to meet this summer and fall to study and discuss ways to improve Alaska’s public schools.

Lawmakers passed a bill last month boosting the base of the state’s school funding formula by $700 after overriding Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto. The bill also made a variety of education policy changes aimed at boosting student performance. Alaska’s schools have consistently lagged near the bottom in national rankings, and school leaders have advocated for larger funding increases, saying the public school system is in crisis.

Debates over school funding have dominated the past two legislative sessions, each culminating in vetoes by Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who told lawmakers he wasn’t convinced a funding boost would improve student performance.

Some lawmakers in the largely Democratic bipartisan coalitions called for a significantly higher funding boost — a more than $1,800-per-student increase in base funding, with future increases tied to inflation — but scaled back their efforts in the face of the state’s funding crunch, vowing additional funding increases in the future.

Sen. Jesse Kiehl, D-Juneau and one of the six lawmakers appointed to the task force, said the Legislature’s work isn’t done.

“This is one of the biggest expenses that state government has in Alaska,” he said. “It’s really important to do the best we possibly can for our kids, and also, always, to do the best we can with the public dollar.”

The Task Force on Education Funding created by House Bill 57 includes three Democrats, one independent and two Republicans, all of whom voted to override Dunleavy’s veto.

It comes with a sprawling mandate. The law tasks the group with analyzing state education funding, health insurance, student absences, school maintenance and ways to hold schools accountable for poor performance, among other things.

Lawmakers included the task force in the bill in an effort to win bipartisan support from lawmakers and — unsuccessfully — from Dunleavy.

Rep. Rebecca Himschoot, I-Sitka, who will co-chair the task force alongside Sen. Loki Tobin, D-Anchorage, said the monthly meetings will give lawmakers a chance to look at some ideas, like Dunleavy’s proposal for inter-district open enrollment, without the pressure of a fast-approaching deadline and the many demands of the legislative session.

“We needed to bring folks along who had ideas that are definitely worthy of a look but were too big to take on in the legislative session,” Himschoot said. “Rather than say no to something that could be a good idea, a task force is an opportunity to study that idea with experts over time and give it a more thorough vetting.”

One of the two minority Republicans on the task force, Soldotna Rep. Justin Ruffridge, said he’s hoping to hear a wide variety of perspectives during the task force’s two years of meetings. He said he’d like to hear from University of Alaska economists, federal Education Department officials and teachers to examine the reasons Alaska’s public school system languishes near the bottom in national rankings.

“I think some of that is due to, you know, reduced funding over the course of the last decade or so. But at the same time, it can’t just be, you know, a money-only solution,” Ruffridge said. “I think you have to start looking at some of the reasons why Alaska is struggling to keep up with other states.”

Ruffridge said he hoped the task force would research and suggest changes to elements of the public school funding formula, including funding for correspondence homeschool and factors that compensate smaller schools and those in high-cost areas.

The task force also includes Rep. Andi Story, D-Juneau, and Sen. Mike Cronk, R-Tok.

The Legislature’s task force announcement comes as Dunleavy weighs whether to reduce education formula funding in the state budget. He said at a Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce luncheon Tuesday that he’s planning to release his line-item vetoes this week, public radio station KUAC reported.

The task force is scheduled to convene in August and meet once a month during the legislative offseason. It’s required to produce a report with its recommendations by early 2027.

The Alaska Board of Education unanimously approved new reading standards for Alaska Native languages Wednesday. This means students from kindergarten to third grade can have their reading skills evaluated in an Alaska Native language instead of in English.

The new standards are broader than the state’s current reading standards. This allows schools to fit the standards to their cultural and linguistic needs.

The standards recognize students can achieve literacy in state languages other than English.

Jamie Shanley is the assistant director of education with Sealaska Heritage Institute, a nonprofit tribal organization that helped create the standards last year. She said the standards give students learning an Alaska Native language another option to meet reading requirements set by the Alaska Reads Act. But it was a challenge to create the standards.

“That was a really hard clashing of two worlds, a Western ideal of education with this standards based system and an indigenous worldview,” she said. “And so this group really has [a] beautiful way of meshing those two things.”

She said the standards aren’t meant to dictate reading in one of the state’s 23 official Alaska Native languages in a confined way.

The standards also define reading differently. Shgen George is one of the owners of Teaching Indigenous Design for Every Student, an education consulting group. She said Alaska Native cultures do read, even if there wasn’t historically a written language.

“Reading is looking at things and gathering information.,” George said. “And so we really talked a lot about how we have been reading things this whole time. And so we really had these deep discussions about reading the weather and reading our environment and reading our regalia and our art.”

There are Alaska Native language programs and schools all around the state, including the Tlingit Culture, Language and Literacy school in Juneau.

Several educators from TCLL helped to form the standards. Principal Molly Yerkes said the school already uses elements of the new standards and that they will help schools take the next steps to develop ways to assess reading in Alaska Native languages.

“In Alaska, every community has to develop their own,” Yerkes said. “It’s not like something you can buy in Texas and McDougal Littell, so I think this adoption of these standards will support the creation of quality materials and also hopefully lead to a support for more native speakers of indigenous languages to become teachers.”

She said the TCLL staff are working with researchers to develop assessments for Lingít learners.

Per Alaska Administrative Code, regulations typically take effect 30 days after they are filed by the Lieutenant Governor.

Update 6/3/25 5:06 p.m:

On Tuesday afternoon, the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development released documents updating the status of the proposed regulation. Now the board must decide whether to adopt it as an emergency regulation, or to open the 30-day comment period for the proposed change.

An emergency regulation means the board could approve the change without a public comment period. It would take effect immediately after approval from the state’s lieutenant governor.

If approved as an emergency regulation, the change would last only 120 days unless the board later approved a permanent regulation change.

The board may also consider the regulation without emergency status and open a 30-day public comment period before taking action.

Original story:

The Alaska State Board of Education is considering a regulation change that would further limit how much money local governments can give to school districts. At its regularly scheduled meeting on Wednesday the board will decide whether to open a 30-day comment period for the proposed change before deciding on approval at a later meeting.

The new regulation would narrow the definition of what kind of spending counts as a local contribution. State law currently limits how much municipalities can give to districts. 

Several school districts interpret the limit to apply only to money for instructional services. Some municipalities like the City and Borough of Juneau give additional money to their school districts for non-instructional services like transportation and preschool. The regulation change would end this practice.

If the regulation is approved, the Juneau School District would need to cut more than $2 million in funding for student activities, food services, after-school child care and more.

Leadership from the Alaska Council of School Administrators said in an email to KTOO the change could affect districts that represent nearly half of the state’s students.

The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, or DEED, drafted a version of the change last November. DEED wrote in a memo to the board that it’s proposing the change to match federal definitions and to remain in compliance with a yearly federal disparity test.

The non-instructional local contributions haven’t been considered in the test. Alexei Painter, one of the state’s legislative fiscal analysts, told KTOO it also wasn’t included in this year’s test, which the state failed.

DEED officials didn’t respond to questions from KTOO Tuesday.

The board will decide whether to open a 30 day public comment period during its business meeting tomorrow. DEED has requested the board include the regulation change at a special meeting in July if the board opens public comment this week.

There is also an opportunity for the public to comment on agenda items early Wednesday morning at 8:25 during the virtual board meeting. Meeting information can be found on the board’s website.

The University of Alaska Southeast hired two new administrators. One will lead its School of Education and the other will oversee the campus in Sitka.

Carlee Simon is the new dean of the UAS School of Education. She’s worked as the school’s interim dean since 2023 and led its accreditation efforts, according to a news release from UAS. The campus appointed her as the permanent dean last December.

Simon said she’s excited to work with faculty on larger projects. This includes developing a new masters of teaching program with a specialty on Indigenous languages, and teaching apprenticeships.

“I think everybody feels that they can kind of settle in and start working on the big efforts and initiatives that we’ve been wanting to get to, but have been waiting for, you know, the stability and leadership,” she said.

UAS also hired Jeremy Rupp as the new Sitka Campus Director. He’s replacing the previous director who retired earlier this year. As director, he will oversee the day to day operations of the Sitka campus.

“This position is meant to support the really important work that others are doing,” he said. “And it’s a community campus, and that means that it’s really meant to support the community.”

Rupp moved to Sitka from Carlton, Minnesota. He started the position about a month ago and said he’s looking forward to being a part of the local community.

Schools across the United States are facing a challenging teacher shortage as fewer people join the profession compared to the number of folks who retire or leave. To keep schools running smoothly, many districts are looking abroad — namely to the Philippines. This is Part 1 of Mabuhay sa Alaska, from KMXT’s Brian Venua, who reports that schools in Alaska are more desperate than most.

Serjoe Gutierrez stood above the Kodiak High School Orchestra, violin in hand, as students rifled through their sheet music for pieces like “The Barber of Seville” and “Canyon Sunset.” Gutierrez often plays with his students instead of conducting them.

Gutierrez, who was born and raised in the Philippines, was in his fifth year of teaching there when he decided he wanted to try to work in another country.

“I think it’s time for me to come out of my comfort zone, explore a lot of opportunities, since I’m still young,” he said.

Alaska wasn’t high on his list. Kodiak barely made it on his radar.

“Kodiak was the last school district I applied to because it was the last school district that pop(ped) out of my Google browser,” Gutierrez said. “And I told myself, ‘Well if not in Kodiak, maybe the United States is not for me.’”

He’s now in his third year of teaching here.

Gutierrez’s immigration story is one of hundreds already playing out in schools all over Alaska, from the Aleutians to the North Slope to Southeast, as dozens of school districts have hired from the Philippines amid a national shortage of certified teachers.

School districts are cutting out the middleman

Gutierrez has become well known in Kodiak. Parents chat with him at student concerts, and he hosts a Filipino music show on KMXT. He plays piano at a local church, as well as violin for charity auctions and in the community’s theater.

He has even joined the Kodiak Island Borough School district’s efforts to recruit more teachers from his home country. In January, Gutierrez helped lead a group of Alaska school administrators on a recruiting trip to the Philippines.

Until recently, school districts have relied on third-party agencies to recruit teachers. But with demand up and opportunities to cut out middlemen, Kodiak’s district has led the way to recruit directly from the Philippines.

Some parents and Kodiak community members have criticized the practice for being too expensive. Kodiak Island Borough School District spent about $28,000 to send a team of 4 people this year, including Gutierrez. Teams like that screen hundreds of candidates in a single trip.

Working with lawyers and visa fees cost an additional $7,000 per teacher hired. Districts also can pay another $2,400 if they want to work with immigration lawyers to extend visas.

Hiring through an agency can cost a district about $27,000 per teacher.

And districts aren’t the only ones that pay when going through agencies. When Gutierrez started looking for work abroad three years ago, he had to pay $50 just to learn how to apply for jobs in other countries. Many teachers in the Philippines make only about $400 per month. He’s heard of some agencies charging teachers thousands of dollars once they’ve been placed in the U.S.

“The best of the best”

It took the group of administrators about two days to travel from Anchorage to the Philippines for the most recent recruitment trip. On the first day of recruiting, in a hotel conference space near Manila, candidates wore Western dresses and suits – even tuxedos. Others wore traditional Filipino formal wear, like embroidered shirts called barong tagalogs and distinctly shouldered filipinianas.

The room was full of candidates with graduate and postgraduate degrees. Some of the administrators said that on recruiting trips within the U.S., candidates were often fresh from their undergraduate colleges.

The Bering Strait School District has hired up to 60 teachers in a single year – about a third of its total teaching staff. The district has hired international teachers through an agency before, but this was its first time sending someone to recruit directly.

Tera Cunningham leads the district’s human resources. She’d never seen so many people vying for teaching jobs in Alaska.

“It’s exciting to see so many well-trained, well-prepared people who genuinely just want to help kids,” she said.

The candidates had only a few minutes to introduce themselves and impress the administrators. Out of the first group of 120 candidates, less than a third had callbacks that day.

“It is intense to do it this way, and we know we’ll get the best of the best here,” Cunningham said.

She said meeting candidates in person helps her visualize them in action.

“And so I’m excited to see who that looks like, what that looks like when they make it through and they’re finally at our sites,” she said.

But not every school district can afford to visit the Philippines. That’s part of why Jennifer Schmidt with the Alaska Council of School Administrators joined the group. She said that the trip makes sense for districts with many openings, but some have only one or two.

The council, which handles the Alaska teacher and personnel system, received grant money from the U.S. Department of Education to improve the state’s retention and recruitment.

Kodiak’s school district has led the recruiting trips so far, but Schmidt said the eventual goal is for her to take the lead. She said ideally, schools wouldn’t need to recruit from abroad, but there just aren’t enough American and Alaska-grown candidates.

“It’s going to take a lot of turnaround and a lot of change in the state of Alaska for us to have enough teachers in Alaska and in the U.S. that are going to want to come and teach there,” she said.

After multiple meetings and extended debate, the school board has agreed to fund more of a Lingít language immersion program in the upcoming school year – even amid statewide school budgeting concerns. 

The program in question is Át Koowaháa: Expanding the Tlingit Culture, Language, and Literacy Program — or TCLL. The school district and the nonprofit arm of a regional Native corporation have historically roughly split the cost. 

The school board signed a memorandum of agreement Wednesday with Sealaska Heritage Institute to increase its investment in the TCLL.

But school board members brought up questions about whether the district should pay for more of the TCLL program amidst widespread concerns about funding. 

Board member Elizabeth Siddon said the school board supports TCLL, but it has to balance that with the needs of the entire district. 

“But we support it amongst how we support all of our 4,000 students,” she said. “So I’m trying to keep in mind that these 119 are not the only students we’re responsible for.”

The school board initially approved the change during its budget process. They were then under the impression that the grant SHI used for the program was ending, according to the school board president. But SHI was later approved for an extension of the grant. 

The program isn’t growing, but now JSD will fund eight of its 11 positions. The change requires an additional $233,802 from the school district’s budget. 

SHI Education Director Kristy Ford said the program is intended to increase the number of Lingít language speakers. 

“We have less than 10 fluent speakers left,” she said. “So the need and the urgency to put an intensive amount of support and instruction into the TCLL program was asked of us.”

Some school board members raised the concern that the program only serves a small percentage of Juneau students, but Ford said the scope is intentional. It is intense and immersive so that there is a group of dedicated speakers to make sure the Lingít language doesn’t go extinct.

Correction: This story has been updated to include a more accurate cost estimate for the two teaching positions.