School Choice

Some legislators and Gov. Sean Parnell have tried, unsuccessfully, to lift a constitutional state ban on using public money for private and religious schools. Where do you stand on the constitutional restriction?

I support the position of the Constitution. The argument that the resources should follow the student, while I understand the basic premise behind that, there is a responsibility for the state to educate all of our kids and the most consistent, highest quality education for everyone is if we have strong public education. People should be given the option or be able to choose to educate their kids in private school and religious schools. Three years when I was growing up in New Jersey, my family chose to put us in a private school and that was an option that worked well for our family. So, those are great options, but the role of the state should be in ensuring that there is high quality public education available to all students.

I feel we should use our public money for public education. On the flip side I can understand that one barrier to private education is funding, therefore the door is not open for everyone. One could easily argue that private education opportunities maintain the status quo as far as our social economic strata is concerned, however I don’t agree with that position. I believe the money should stay in the public schools and we should come up with other options to fund those who may not be able to afford going to a private school.

I believe that our public educational funds need to be spent on our public educational process. There is a place and there certainly is room for a variety of educational options, I support that. We’ve certainly expanded that in the Juneau School District by including Montessori and being very supportive of the charter school programs, as well as staying at home, the Home Bridge program and so on, those things are really al vital. Choices are critical, however in an environment where we have such a restriction on what revenue and what resources we have for a public educational system I think it’s really, really important to prioritize those funds back into the public educational system specifically.