The House majority is up to its usual tricks again, this time end-running the budget process by trying to appropriate the Constitutional Budget Reserve (CBR) to forward fund education and education transportation.
Leadoff to this gambit was a suitably whiney piece Feb. 3 by “independent” Jason Grenn entitled “Lets end the annual pink-slip circus, bring stability to Alaska Schools.” In it Grenn bemoans the practice of the Anchorage School District (ASD) of threatening teachers with layoff notices if they don’t receive every red cent they demand for the yearly budget. Of course, Grenn knows (or being a legislator should know) that it is up to the individual school districts to decide how to address budget shortfalls. The decision to threaten teachers yearly via a Washington Monument budget wars strategy is entirely up to ASD.
Grenn’s proposed solution is to dip into the Constitutional Budget Reserve for public education to the tune of $1.2 billion, and presumably do it every year to come until the Constitutional Budget Reserve is gone. This puts education spending above every single other budget item here in Alaska for all time. To justify this rewrite of public education funding, Grenn hides behind friends and children in a suitably heart rending column. You can read it all at the following link: https://www.adn.com/opinions/2018/02/03/lets-end-the-annual-pink-slip-circus-bring-stability-to-alaska-schools/
There are many problems with doing this, first among them is the complete lack of public discussion about what the future of public education in this state ought to be. Once we figure that out, we can then figure out how public education ought to be funded and what those funding levels ought to be.
For a young guy with kids in school, Grenn is sadly (intentionally?) ignorant of huge changes in education taking place today. Hint: It is moving online. And a canned course accessible over a browser is a lot cheaper and more flexible to deliver than via students and teachers sitting in a brick and mortar school building. Recent examples include but are not limited to Kahn Academy (math and science education), Coursera, MITx, and a variety of Information Technology training. Lessons learned from online gaming are also starting to be applied to online coursework. https://www.khanacademy.org/
These are the leading edge of a changes that will allow parents to get better individual education for their kids at a significantly lower cost than we are now capable of doing in this state. But the House majority don’t seem interested in that discussion. OTOH, they are real interested in making a PR splash, which they did.
Locking public education funding to the CBR ignores the fact that in this state, level of spending does not correlate to performance. We prove this every single day as the home schoolers spend by far the least per student and get the best results, while public schools in the Bush spend the most per student and get by far the worst results. Tell me again why we are locking in spending at the currently unsustainable levels, right at the point where the entire education world is in the process of changing. http://www.akleg.gov/basis/Bill/Text/30?Hsid=HB0287A
The other smarmy little trick Grenn and his majority are engaged in is removing a political tool from the minority during legislative budget wars. It takes a 75% majority to spend the CBR. For years, a democrat minority has used this leverage to get hundreds of millions of dollars of additional spending in return for their yearly votes on the budget.
Today that shoe is on the other foot, with the House minority withholding their votes to use the CBR in return for additional budget cuts. Grenn and his majority intend to remove that tool from the minority by spending the CBR first. Of course Grenn didn’t mention this in his article.
Now here’s the funny part: In order to tap the CBR, the House Majority needed 30 votes, including at least 8 members of the minority. They didn’t get those votes. Neither did they include language about fallback funding should the CBR gambit fail. This means that they passed and sent a bill on to the senate that did not fund public education at all. This marks a new low in responsibility (or a new high water mark of irresponsibility) for this democrat-led majority. Calling this a clown show would be an insult to seasoned circus entertainment professionals.
If we want to improve education here in Alaska, we must put control of the money and resources as close to the individual students as humanly possible. We know it works via the superior work of the home schoolers. We prove it every single day. Perhaps it is time to extend that freedom to other parents and students.
Grenn and his majority don’t trust those parents to do the right things for their children. Why should we trust their judgement on anything else?
Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He is a small business owner and Information Technology professional.
