State Government

It’s been a constant chorus for years: Alaska’s schools are underfunded and struggling to do the very basics of educating the state’s kids.

Just this year, Sen. Cathy Giessel, R-Anchorage, read a letter from a second-grader about classrooms where there isn’t enough room for kids to sit on the rug together. In Ketchikan, Superintendent Michael Robbins told lawmakers interventions for kids identified as falling behind — an initiative he spearheaded after taking the helm of a district facing a leadership crisis just a few years ago — aren’t happening. There’s just no money.

The Anchorage School District passed a budget last month to lay off hundreds of staff and slash everything from gifted programs to sports if the basic input into the state’s public school funding formula, the base student allocation, doesn’t rise significantly.

Lawmakers from both parties appear to agree: school funding should be increased. But by how much — and whether the bill that passes will survive a veto from Gov. Dunleavy — is unclear.

Leaders in the state House said early this session they planned to get a school funding bill out the door sometime in March. (School district budgets for the next fiscal year, starting July 1, are typically due to local governments in the early spring.)

But that deadline has come and gone. So, this week, teachers across the state got notices telling them they may not have jobs this coming year — 160 on the Kenai Peninsula alone, Superintendent Clayton Holland said.

Some 185 teachers in Anchorage would be displaced without a funding boost, in addition to nearly 170 already-unfilled teacher jobs, said said Lon Garrison, the head of the Association of Alaska School Boards. In Fairbanks, over 100 staff are likely to lose their jobs if funding remains at current levels, he said, and 25 to 35 jobs are at risk in Ketchikan.

We’ve seen this before. Several times. Many of the teachers will, in fact, have jobs next year. But many others will seek greener pastures elsewhere.

Just ask Rick Dormer, the Ketchikan High School principal who’s interviewing for jobs in Oregon after more than a decade leading schools in Southeast Alaska.

He says he doesn’t want to leave, but it’s getting harder to justify staying in Alaska when other states pay higher salaries and offer better retirement and benefits packages. Teachers and school staff have left the state in droves: this year, over 600 certified teacher positions were vacant on the first day of school, according to an advocacy group.

Meanwhile, Alaska’s test scores remain near the bottom of national rankings with little sign of improvement.

That’s no coincidence, said Lisa Parady, the executive director of the Alaska Council of School Administrators, in testimony before the House and Senate Education Committees:

“When I hear ‘Education is failing,’ I say, ‘No, education is starving,’” she said.

Why funding is in question

How much will schools ultimately get this year? That’s still up in the air, though a final decision is nearing.

Senate Education Committee Chair Löki Tobin, D-Anchorage, revised and moved forward the leading education funding bill on Wednesday with a $1,000 boost to basic per-student funding. That’s the same amount approved by the House last month.

“We recognize that we need to have a substantial increase to school funding to help stave off so many of the devastating impacts that our districts have been communicating to us,” she told reporters on Tuesday.

After clearing the Education Committee, the funding boost bill, House Bill 69, now heads to the Senate Finance Committee, responsible for balancing the state budget.

Whether the $1,000 figure will survive the Finance Committee is unclear.

The state’s finances continue to look worse than they have in decades, according to the Senate’s top budgeter, Sen. Lyman Hoffman, D-Bethel, who has been a legislator since 1987. According to estimates following a worse-than-expected revenue forecast, due largely to faltering oil prices, Alaska lawmakers have to find $677 million just to maintain what is essentially the status quo.

Turmoil in the financial markets is likely to add to the pain.

Crude oil dropped 7% on Friday to its lowest level since 2021 as the world reckoned with the fallout of President Donald Trump’s decision to impose double-digit tariffs on countries around the world. The stock market, which plays an increasingly important role in Alaska’s state’s budget, is also in freefall, with the S&P 500 down 17.4% from a February record high. Nearly 11% of that loss has come in the two days since Trump’s tariff announcement.

The Alaska Permanent Fund, which provides more than half of the state’s general-purpose revenue with an annual transfer of 5% its market value, lost about 1% of its value from Wednesday to Thursday, spokesperson Paulyn Swanson said, a substantially smaller loss than the market as a whole.

“The Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation has a diversified portfolio designed to mitigate market volatility,” she said via email. “It holds investments across various asset classes, including bonds and real estate, that provide steady income streams that are less affected by market fluctuations.”

Because the transfer is based on a five-year average of the fund’s value, a sustained downturn could put downward pressure on state revenue for years to come.

Federal funding, the largest source of overall state revenue, is also under threat as Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency seek to slash government spending. A forthcoming congressional tax and spending cut package put forward by Republicans at Trump’s request also casts a long shadow over the state’s financial future.

Budgeters consider lower funding boost amid financial pressure

The state’s bad and worsening financial picture has pushed Hoffman, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee as it considers the annual operating budget, to repeatedly call for a smaller increase in school funding this year. Scenarios he’s requested from nonpartisan budget analysts have assumed a $680 increase in the base student allocation.

This week, he sent a memo to Senate budgeters urging them to strenuously avoid any budget increases so that the state can afford a $680 increase. The memo was first reported by the budget-focused Alaska Political Report.

A $680 increase in the base student allocation would essentially keep school funding flat from where it ultimately landed last year, when lawmakers decided to provide $175 million in one-time funding for school districts.

Tobin, the Education Committee chair, argues that despite the grim financial picture, a $1000 increase is badly needed.

“$80 million more to help keep some of the programs that we all deeply love in our public school systems, to retain nurses, to keep after-school programs, to keep sports,” she said Thursday, “is a very prudent and reasonable investment in the future of our kids.”

But it’s unclear how many senators share her view.

“My caucus is split on the issue,” Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak, said Tuesday. “I wish I could say that … we’ve consolidated around a particular number, but we have not done that.”

Tobin said passing Senate-proposed corporate and oil tax increases — which face long odds in the House and even longer odds at the governor’s desk — would help ease the financial pressure.

Another wild card: Gov. Dunleavy’s veto threat

Complicating the future of school funding even further is a veto threat from Gov. Mike Dunleavy. Though members of the House and Senate’s Democrat-heavy bipartisan majority caucuses prefer a no-strings-attached increase, Dunleavy has said repeatedly he’ll veto any school funding bill that does not include specific policy items that he says will boost student performance.

He applauded the bill that passed the House, calling the various policy changes attached to it — among them, a ban on cellphones in schools, a new open enrollment policy and a literacy-focused incentive program — “positive movement.” But, simultaneously, he called for additional “improvements, both in cost and policy.”

Dunleavy and his spokespeople have been silent on the specific funding level the governor would support, leaving lawmakers to speculate.

“Just reading the tea leaves, I think there’s probably a good chance the governor would veto $1,000 and if he does that, then where are we?” Stevens said. “Would he veto $680? I’m not sure of that.”

Meanwhile, if you ask Dunleavy, the bill is moving the wrong direction when it comes to the policy changes included within it.

Dunleavy took particular issue with a provision within the new bill that would require homeschooled students in correspondence programs — about one in five Alaska students — to take a standardized test or alternative assessment, like a portfolio review, in order to access cash payments for curriculum and services.

“While there was initially positive movement on HB 69, the Senate Education Committee’s version falls short of the education reforms Alaskan families deserve and puts inequitable constraints on correspondence school students,” Dunleavy said on social media. “This current CS does not pass muster.”

Tobin, the Education Committee chair who added the provision, said the testing provision is a “proactive” effort to help the state achieve the requirements of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act and a landmark 2005 consent decree.

Though the governor’s office worked closely with lawmakers on the version of the bill that passed the House, closed-door negotiations between Dunleavy and lawmakers appear to have stalled.

That’s no accident, Tobin said.

“The best way to get public input is through a very public and transparent committee hearing process. At this point, the community has a right to have input in the legislation,” Tobin said. “It should not be superseded by the elites in this building.”

But what that means for the future of the education bill is anybody’s guess.

The Alaska House of Representatives on Thursday approved a bill that seeks to solve a nearly $200 million state budget deficit, but legislators failed to approve spending from a state savings account, something needed to fix the deficit.

House Bill 56, which passed on a 21-19 vote, is a “fast-track supplemental” budget bill designed to address the current fiscal year, which ends June 30.

Because of lower-than-expected oil prices and higher-than-expected costs, there isn’t enough money in the budget to pay for spending through the end of the year. That’s caused lawmakers to turn to the Constitutional Budget Reserve, the state’s principal savings account.

“The vote we’re taking today is just about paying for what we’ve already authorized,” said Rep. Andy Josephson, D-Anchorage and co-chair of the House Finance Committee, before the vote. “These items we’ve already authorized are for these immediate-term priorities like disaster relief, fire protection and ongoing lawsuits that were brought to us by the governor.”

Spending from the reserve requires three-quarters of the 40-person House and three-quarters of the 20-person Senate, plus the assent of the governor.

But on Thursday, only 21 members of the House voted in favor of the clause that unlocks the budget reserve. All of the “no” votes came from members of the House’s Republican minority caucus. All of the “yes” votes came from the House’s multipartisan majority.

If the bill fails to pass the Legislature, Gov. Mike Dunleavy would be forced to make unilateral cuts to the state budget, impounding funding for various programs.

For the moment, that’s a distant prospect.

Despite the failed budget reserve vote, HB 56 will advance to the Senate — 21 votes is the minimum needed to advance a bill from the House to the Senate — but the failed vote means that the House will need to revote on the budget reserve clause once the Senate acts.

“We’re still early in the process,” said House Minority Leader Mia Costello, R-Anchorage.

Historically, members of the House minority have withheld support for the CBR vote until after the Senate approves the bill.

By waiting, the minority preserves its negotiating leverage, Costello said. That makes it less likely that minority-opposed provisions will be added to the bill.

In addition, it’s possible that the fast-track budget bill will later be combined with the budget bill for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1. So-called “turducken” budget bills have previously included one budget reserve vote for both fiscal years.

Rep. Kevin McCabe, R-Big Lake and a member of the minority caucus, said before Thursday’s vote that the fast-track bill lacks minority input and that as a result, he could not support it.

As currently written, the bill would use savings to pay for more than $111 million in previously unforeseen spending, including millions for wildfire response, Medicaid and disaster aid. Those additions were requested by the governor to meet state needs.

One late-adopted amendment, approved Thursday by the House, restored a funding request for village public safety officers, who serve a police and lifesaving role in rural Alaska communities.

On top of the additional spending, revenue is down about $80 million from what had been expected last year.

The Senate Finance Committee has already scheduled hearings for HB 56, indicating that it may move quickly toward a vote of the full Senate.

Even if the fast-track supplemental budget is adopted in time, lawmakers still must resolve an expected deficit in the 2026 fiscal year, which starts July 1. The House is expected to begin debate on a budget bill for that fiscal year next week.

Visitors to the state Capitol in Juneau will have to go through a metal detector under a policy adopted on Monday.

The Capitol visitor screening policy was approved in a 9-4 vote by the Legislative Council, a body made up of members from both the House and Senate that sets the rules for the Capitol complex.

Lawmakers did not publicly discuss or debate the policy change. Before the vote, they met in a session closed to the public for more than an hour and a half for a security briefing and to discuss the policy proposal.

The council declined to require that people in the building have ID badges, which was part of the original proposal.

Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak and the council’s vice chair, supported the change. He described his reasoning in a Senate majority caucus news conference on Tuesday.

“The idea, really, is … to make sure people aren’t entering with weapons — with guns, with knives and that sort of thing,” he said. “You know, some folks have said, ‘Well, let’s wait until there’s an incident, where someone gets hurt, and then we will install it.’ I think that’s not wise at all.”

Stevens cited a comment by Sen. Lyman Hoffman, D-Bethel, that hundreds of people undergo screenings at the annual Alaska Federation of Natives convention with little wait time.

Stevens also noted that metal detectors are used in the Dimond Courthouse across the street from the Capitol.

“You have them [at] every airport you enter into, so it’s not as if people are unaware of how they work,” he said.

People who already have an electronic keycard to enter the building will not be affected by the policy. Stevens said the security staff who will operate the metal detectors say 20 seconds is the most time it would take to move through the devices.

Stevens said several times recently, people who work in the Capitol have told him they had concern or fear regarding visitors who don’t have a reason to be in the building.

Rep. Sara Hannan, D-Juneau and the council chair, also voted for the change. She wrote in a newsletter to constituents on Tuesday that no legislators were happy to make the change, but waiting for a tragedy to occur was unacceptable.

“Legislative Council did not arrive at this decision lightly. For decades, we in Alaska have taken pride in the citizenry’s open access to the Legislature,” Hannon wrote. “However, and very unfortunately, in recent years our country has changed in ways that have led to increased risk of violence in our public institutions. The tragic, unchecked level of shootings in U.S. schools is in itself horrifying. The January 6th, 2020, attack on the nation’s Capitol is another dispiriting example.”

Rep. Kevin McCabe, R-Big Lake, opposed the change. He is not currently on the council but served as its vice chair last year and said the idea has been under discussion for at least four years. He said Capitol security staff had brought up how only a few state capitols do not require screening. He said the staff’s job is to keep the building secure, and they were doing their job by bringing the screening idea to legislators.

McCabe said the discussions prompted him and other Matanuska-Susitna Borough legislators to ask constituents about the idea while they were campaigning.

“They’re already very angry that the Capitol is still down here in Juneau, where they can’t come visit and they can’t really get to us, so they just saw closing the Capitol with magnetometers and badges … they saw that as just another step in isolating legislators from the public,” McCabe said. “And they believe, as do I frankly, that the Capitol building is the people’s building.”

McCabe predicted that the next step would be to require badges.

“I just feel we should leave it open. We have a really able security team and, frankly, Alaskans are just not that militant, that they would storm the Capitol or come into the Capitol and create an issue,” he said.

The council members who voted for the policy change were chair Rep. Sara Hannan, D-Juneau; Stevens; House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham; Sen. Matt Claman, D-Anchorage; Sen. Cathy Giessel, R-Anchorage; Sen. Elvi Gray-Jackson, D-Anchorage; Rep. Calvin Schrage, I-Anchorage; Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka; and Rep. Louise Stutes, R-Kodiak.

Voting against requiring the screenings were Rep. Ashley Carrick, D-Fairbanks; Sen. Jesse Kiehl, D-Juneau; Rep. Chuck Kopp, R-Anchorage; and Rep. Mike Prax, R-North Pole.

The council also voted 8-5 to award a contract for up to $35,000 to University Protection Service LP to provide the screening services. The only difference in the council members’ votes was that of Stedman, who voted against the contract. He said he generally opposed adding the metal detectors, noting that visitors already have to make an effort to go to Juneau. But he said he decided to vote for the policy after the council made it less onerous by removing the ID badge requirement.

Tali Stone was nine years old when her foster mother brought her to North Star, an acute psychiatric facility in Anchorage. Stone said she had been refusing to go to bed and got in a fight with her foster mom. She said her foster mom had talked about North Star before, as leverage sometimes if one of her nine foster kids wasn’t behaving.

“She always described it to me as a prison,” Stone said. “She said that they’ll lock you up. She said that it was moldy inside the building, like an actual prison.”

But this time it wasn’t an empty threat. Typically, to be admitted to a psychiatric facility someone needs to be at risk of suicide or violence, experiencing psychosis, or unable to care for themselves. Stone said during the intake, her foster mom exaggerated her behavior and lied that she was seeing ghosts.

“Even the staff said, themselves, ‘I’m not sure why you’re here,’” Stone said. “And I was like, ‘I’m not sure either.’”

Stone was at North Star for four weeks, according to her psychiatric records. And over the next two years, she was admitted to North Star a total of four times, each stay several weeks at a time.

Stone was one of the thousands of kids under the care of the Office of Children’s Services in Alaska, or OCS, who have spent time, sometimes unnecessarily, in acute psychiatric facilities. OCS is under-resourced, with a high staff turnover rate, and a serious shortage of foster families. The Department of Justice reprimanded the state in 2022 for overreliance on psychiatric hospitals and residential treatment, and the office has made improvements since then.

OCS officials did not agree to an interview for this story, but commissioner Kim Kovol from the department that oversees OCS, wrote over email that there is a lack of appropriate placements nationwide for youth with serious behavioral and emotional challenges. She wrote that they will continue to use “all existing services to the greatest extent possible,” and work towards the least restrictive care settings.

But Amanda Metivier, who runs the nonprofit Facing Foster Care, said that lack of placements means foster kids stay in psychiatric facilities for too long.

“They do an intake at a hospital, they get a diagnosis, and then they linger there,” Metivier said. “[It] used to be for months on end, but because of court cases, it’s now weeks.”

Right now kids have the right to a court hearing within 30 days of admittance, but the bill passed by the state House March 26 would reduce that timeline to seven days. That’s still much longer than many states, which require a hearing within 72 hours.

Timeliness is important because kids say these facilities are traumatic.

“What happens in these facilities?” Metivier said. “Children are physically restrained, chemically restrained, put in quiet rooms or in seclusion.”

She said even if kids in facilities don’t experience those directly, just witnessing them can be traumatic.

If the bill passes, when a child does get a court hearing, all people invested in the child’s care would have to be there: birth parents, foster families, tribes, behavioral health care providers and OCS. Every kid over ten would also have their own lawyer who could advocate for them being in the least restrictive setting appropriate.

State Representative Andrew Gray, who sponsored the bill, said there’s a lot at stake.

“The absolute human rights violation of having your freedoms completely taken away and no one coming to help you, that alone is enough that we have to fix it,” Gray said. “But, if you want to just look at it from a fiscal perspective, we’re wasting tons of money on keeping a child in the most expensive possible placement.”

He said inpatient care can cost more than a thousand dollars a night per child, a cost that is usually shared by the state and federal government.

The legislation didn’t pass last session when it included a shorter 72-hour time period before a required hearing, but Gray is optimistic it will pass this year. He said it’s important kids don’t get stuck in these places.

Metivier worked with kids in foster care to help draft the bill, and said it would add a sense of urgency to the process of assessing the care.

“We need to act quickly on either identifying a higher level of care or different therapeutic intervention, or releasing them,” she said.

Tali Stone, who entered North Star at age nine, didn’t get that kind of grace. She said she never got a hearing at all to assess whether she should be there. And she said her experience at North Star, totaling about four months, changed her from an outgoing kid to one who was reserved and numb.

“I didn’t have anyone else to tell me that you’re just a kid,” she said. “You’re just dealing with stuff that’s natural, if you’re going through this situation, telling me that I’m not a bad kid, that I’m loved, stuff like that.”

Stone said now, at age 19, about nine years after her last stay, she still feels the effects. She struggles with self esteem and self hatred.

But she recently got a job she loves, she said, with a coworker she admires.

“Every day, he’s just being himself, and I look up to him,” Stone said. “I want to know how that feels one day.”

She said she really hopes this bill passes. It now heads to the state Senate. She wants foster kids in institutions to know they’re not forgotten, and there are people out here looking out for them.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game is imposing what it calls “unprecedented” conservation measures to address declines of Gulf of Alaska Chinook salmon — also known as king salmon — which is currently under review for listing under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The department said in a March 18 announcement that it will be restricting western Alaska king salmon fisheries, including in Kodiak, Chignik and Sand Point.

Matt Keyse, an area management biologist at Fish and Game’s Sand Point office, said the measures reflect a broader shift in strategy, and that it is unusual to restrict multiple fisheries based on broad concerns for Chinook salmon across the Gulf of Alaska.

“That is unprecedented,” Keyse said.

Sand Point — off the Alaska Peninsula — is in the middle of the management region known as Area M. Although it doesn’t have its own king runs, fishermen intercept salmon that migrate through the region. In recent years, Area M’s harvest levels have drawn criticism from stakeholders in Western Alaska, who argue the fishery reduces local salmon returns.

Keyse said genetic sampling shows much of the Chinook harvested in the South Peninsula fishery actually come from the Pacific Northwest. He noted the data comes from DNA sampling taken around a decade ago, but said new genetic sampling conducted over the next several salmon seasons will “provide us with a better understanding of the stocks that are harvested within this area.”

He added that the new management approach reflects a broader effort to distribute conservation burdens more evenly across the regions that encounter Gulf of Alaska Chinook.

Recent Chinook-related closures have also taken place elsewhere in the state. Last year, the fleet in the federally-managed Central Gulf pollock fishery, which is mostly based out of Kodiak, voluntarily ended its season when Chinook bycatch reached a specified threshold.

Keyse said the department is looking at ways to try to boost Chinook stocks throughout the gulf, and additional measures could affect other fisheries.

“Everyone that’s catching fish is going to bear a little bit of that burden,” he said.

Starting July 1, for instance, purse seiners on the Alaska Peninsula in the Area M region will have to release Chinook measuring 28 inches or longer. That restriction was in place last year as well. But the department is also imposing a new catch limit of 1,000 salmon during any 36-hour opener in a harvest area on the east side of Popof Island, where Sand Point is located.

The current, planned restrictions apply only to purse seiners and are limited to July, but Keyse said the management plan could evolve based on in-season harvest numbers.

Correction: An earlier version of this story included a quote that incorrectly stated it was unprecedented to manage a fishery based on data from fish not found locally. While such management is not new, the current measures are unprecedented because they restrict several fisheries based on concern for king salmon in the Gulf of Alaska.

School districts across the state are starting to issue “pink slip” notices to teachers and staff that they may be laid off, in what has become a difficult spring tradition in Alaska, as legislators debate how much the state will allocate to education funding next school year.

The Kenai Peninsula School District is among those districts, issuing notices for 160 teachers and staff starting this week, Superintendent Clayton Holland told lawmakers on Monday.

School district officials and advocates from around the state testified before a joint hearing of the House and Senate education committees, discussing a variety of issues and priorities of districts, including the cost of staff retention, recruitment and turnover.

“Because we’re not certain what our budget will be,” Holland said in an interview after the hearing. “And just like all districts, we can’t afford to be wrong. We can’t jeopardize our fiscal future, or the fiscal stability of our district, by overdrawing (from district savings). So right now, we’re in a holding pattern.”

Legislators in the Senate are considering a bill passed by the Alaska House of Representatives earlier this month which would provide a $1,000 boost to per student funding. The actual amount of the increase would be higher based on factors included in the funding formula, including the size of schools and special needs. The bill is currently being heard in the Senate Education Committee.

Holland said the district calculated the 160 staff positions that received notices based on an estimated $680 increase in per student funding, the amount included in the current budget as a one-time addition. “And so even with that $680 (increase) we’re uncertain,” he said. “We don’t know. And it’s a risk at this point.”

Holland said that while school districts grapple with budget uncertainty every year, this year is more dire because districts have less in savings, there is less interest from teachers in applying to Alaska positions, and schools face teacher shortages already.

“I think maybe back in the old days, people would wait it out, the job was worth waiting for, and there are enough people looking for jobs. But right now that’s not the case,” Holland said. “People go elsewhere and find jobs. They’ll leave our state and look for jobs. They’ll go to places that have a retirement system, have no fiscal instability, and leave us. And then it leaves us in June, looking for people who don’t exist.”

Alaska schools began the school year with over 600 certified teacher vacancies, according to a joint position statement from the Alaska Council of School Administrators, and some Alaska schools did not have a single certified teacher on the first day of school.

The council provides professional development and advocacy for Alaska educators statewide. It urged state action to address the “dire vacancy rates” by providing competitive salaries, benefits and a defined benefit retirement option.

“Our goal is to attract and retain qualified educators, and we look at why they are leaving,” said Lori Rucksdashel, principal of Chinook Elementary School in Anchorage and president of the Alaska Association of Elementary School Principals, testifying to lawmakers.

“What we know is nine out of 10 teachers hired each year are replacing colleagues who left voluntarily,” she said. “More than two-thirds of teachers quit before retirement.”

She said that the challenges are greater at schools that serve lower-income communities and receive federal Title I funding, adding that their turnover rates are 50% higher than other schools, and 70% higher in math and science.

Rucksdashel cited research from the University of Alaska Anchorage Institute of Social and Economic Research that estimates the turnover cost per teacher at over $20,000, including costs for recruitment, hiring and training.

She said the lack of retirement benefits is one of the driving forces for teachers leaving. “They are leaving because of the lack of defined benefits. They are leaving because of better opportunities in the Lower 48. They are leaving because of the cost of living, and right now, they are leaving because of uncertainty of educational funding.”

Rucksdashel told lawmakers she gave notice to staff at her elementary school that same morning, including a school nurse, a story she shared with her permission. “I spoke with my nurse, who is not only a professional in her field, but a parent of three students in my school. She chose to be a school nurse because she wanted to provide for Alaska’s children as well as be with her family,” she said. “This morning, I displaced her. She is not going to wait around until we decide that we have the funding to bring her back.”

On Monday, the Anchorage School District issued an estimated 360 notices to teachers and staff, to address a $43 million shortfall. The district pledged to reverse those cuts if the Legislature passed a $1,000 per student funding increase, according to the Anchorage Daily News.

This year, school districts around the state are grappling with budget shortfalls and school closures and consolidations, including Anchorage, Fairbanks, the Kenai Peninsula Borough, Kodiak and Ketchikan.

Rick Dormer, principal of Ketchikan High School and president of the Alaska Association of Secondary School Principals, told lawmakers Monday that he himself is actively applying for jobs in Oregon.

“Because if I go to Oregon, I can get a defined benefit package, I can have higher wages, I can have a lower cost of living, and I don’t have to take the time and expense to get on a Boeing jet to see my family,” he said. “It is a challenge. We want to stay. I want to stay, but we’re also highly educated professionals. We have personal goals. We have professional goals. And I can tell you that there are a lot of options out there.”

Dormer said the ACSA is working to deter turnover with mentorship, networking and leadership training opportunities for educators around the state. But he urged legislators to take action and increase per student funding.

“That’s public schools, that’s charter schools, that’s homeschools …. Every school needs quality leadership and quality teachers, and Alaska is losing their educational leaders at a very rapid rate,” he said. “Please help our children, every child, every day, to have access to the very best education possible from effective teachers and experienced, supported principals.”

In the meantime, the Senate Education Committee is hearing the school funding bill proposed by House legislators, House Bill 69, and will consider amendments. If the committee advances the bill, it would move to the Senate Finance Committee before going to a full vote in the Senate. If passed by the Senate, it would then go before Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who could sign it, veto it or allow it to become law without his signature. Dunleavy and his legislative allies have said that any school funding increase should be accompanied by policy changes he has proposed, including expanding charter schools.