Alaska Legislature: Special Coverage - November 12, 2026 9:00am

Good morning, folks. I call this meeting of the Task Force on Education Funding to order. It is 9:02 AM here on Thursday, November 12th. This meeting is being held in the Denali Room here in the Anchorage Legislative Information Office. It is also being streamed online at the Alaska Legislature website at akl.tv and on Gavel to Gavel Alaska.

I just want to remind folks who are here in the room, if they could please mute their cell phones. Documents for today's meetings have been uploaded to BASIS and distributed to members. There's also additional copies available for folks here in the room right there by the table— on the table by the door. Members present today are co-chair Representative Himschoot, who is watching online. We also have online with us is Representative Story.

We also have Senator Kiehl, who is on the phone from the Juneau the State Capitol building in Juneau. We also have with us Representative Ruffridge, who's participating from the Kenai Peninsula. Myself, Senator Luki Giessel, Tobin co-chair, is present here in the Anchorage LIO. I want to thank Cassie and Tristan from the Anchorage LIO for moderating today's meeting. All right.

On the agenda today, we are taking public testimony on a series of draft recommendations that were released to the public on Monday. For those who are unable to testify today, I want to encourage you to email one of the two following email addresses. We will be taking public testimony through December 8th. Those email addresses are [email protected], [email protected]. You can also email our Education Task Force address at edfundtaskforce, all one word, all lowercase, at akleg.gov.

That is [email protected].

If you are here in person and planning to testify, I ask if you could add your name to the sign-up sheet by the door. Similar, if you are in Fairbanks or Juneau or Kenai, there will be sign-up sheets available prior to your admittance into the rooms to provide your in-person public testimony. We will be prioritizing in-person public testimony, and when we have exhausted the in-person public testimony, we will move on to our remote or telephonic testimony. If you would like to call in to provide your public testimony, you can do so at any time between 9:00 AM today and noon from the Anchorage LIO, where we'll be taking that public testimony. Additionally, if you're in the Fairbanks area and you would like to provide public testimony, You can go to their Legislative Information Office located at 1292 Saddler Way, Suite 308, and that is from 1 to 3 p.m.

If you are in the state Capitol located in Juneau, you can go to the Davis Committee Room between 3 and 5 p.m. And if you were in the Kenai area, the Kenai Legislative Information Office, which is located on 145 Main Street Loop, Suite 217, is available from 5 to 7 p.m. for your public testimony. If you would like to call in, Anchorage residents may call 907-563-9085. If you call that number, it saves us a little bit of money. Let's make government efficient and effective for the people. If you're in the Juneau area, you may call 907-586-9085.

From all other locales, you can call our toll-free number, which is 1-844-586-9085.

These numbers are also listed on the public meeting notice on the Alaska Legislature's website.

I will repeat them throughout today just so folks have that information at the ready if they would like to provide comments. All right. We are going to begin with a short presentation from the Senate committee aide, Mr. Mason. But before we do, I just want to make a few remarks about how we got to this point. If folks remember, we began this work as indicated by House Bill 57, which was passed into law after the governor vetoed it and we were able to successfully override his gubernatorial veto.

The discussions that led to the task force formation were really around how do we provide an adequate education to every student in Alaska. As the task force spent the last 16 months traveling the state and talking to stakeholders and listening to parents and teachers and students, we really recognized that the state had not adopted a definition of adequate education. There have been many court cases and many discussions in public settings about what does it take to provide adequate education here in the state. However, a single definition had not been adopted by your legislative branch. We believe that the primary focus of the task force is— we are not school finance experts.

We come from many different walks of life and we are citizen lawmakers who have many different responsibilities that pull at our time— was to ensure that we listen to you to codify that definition and then employ experts to help us analyze our school funding formula to ensure that the pieces we've put in place over the last 40 years would adequately fund education. Now, interestingly enough, that approach was actually supposed to have been taken in 2014 when the legislature had asked the Legislative Budget and Appropriations Committee to commission an adequacy study. The RFP was put out to bid, and unfortunately, the time horizon of that adequacy study, which was only 8 months, was too short. And the school finance experts came back and said, we need more time. The state of Alaska is geographically diverse and broad, and to give the due diligence that is necessary to produce a comprehensive report would need more time than 8 months.

Unfortunately, a second RFP was never pursued. Uh, at the time, there was a person who was the head of the Senate Education Committee who did not pursue that. He is now the governor of Alaska. When we had our task force meeting on November 20th, we heard from the school finance experts who emphatically pleaded to us, if you want to take politics out of your school funding you need to have an independent analysis conducted of your school funding formula based on your definition of adequate education to ensure that the components are actually doing what we ask them to do, that schools have the resources they need to fund our education system. That is why it was the top priority of the task force.

We decided at that November 20th meeting that time should not wait until the, the recommendations were put to the public for comment, that we wanted to pursue that adequacy study. This is why you saw that money included in the FY28 budget. Unfortunately, that money was again vetoed by Governor Dunleavy. We are again at the point where we need this information to ensure that we put the right resources into the right components for our school systems, but we do not have that independent analysis that is absolutely critical to funding our education system. 40 States across the nation have conducted an independent analysis of their school funding formula and have been able to tweak their school funding formula to improve their outcomes.

Alaska has not been able to do that work yet. This is why you see a study as the number one recommendation of the task force, because we still believe it is the most critical component to ensuring that we have an adequately funded education that is not about partisan politics or who's the loudest voice in the room, but about what we actually want to see from our schools. I'm very hopeful today that the public testimony will really focus on that definition of adequate education. We traveled to over 5 school sites over 19 different schools to really work together to build this definition. But we know we might have missed something.

That is where you come in, the public. Your responsibility to help us understand what we did not see in those conversations with stakeholders, with students, with teachers, with administrators, to help us understand that we have either been able to capture lightning in a bottle or we missed something very critical to the, the foundation of what creates a public education system that is open to all students. I am very excited about the work that this task force has done, but I recognize that it is incomplete without that adequacy study. I recognize that we have a long road ahead of us to implement the recommendations, both short, mid, and long term, that are included in this report. I am here for the long haul.

I have been reaffirmed as the Senate Education Chair for at least the next 2 years, and so it is my single-minded focus to ensure that the recommendations that this task force eventually adopts are the ones that we will continue to pursue as positive public policy for the state. The final points I want to make is that this is a draft set of recommendations. There is a full report that will be released in January. These recommendations will inform that full report. The report will provide all of the citations and documentation about how we came to these recommendations.

But prior to continuing to pursue work on that final report, we want to know that the recommendations we've landed on resonate with the public. That is why we are engaged in the public process at this point. Once we adopt the final report, we will again seek input from the public to ensure that what we have captured resonates with all the citizens of Alaska. And with that, I will ask Mr. Mason to join us here at the dais and begin the presentation on how did we get to this stage of the process.

Good morning. My name is Mike Mason. I am staff to Senator Luki Tobin. And I am the Senate staffer for the Task Force on Education funding. As you know, the purpose of today's meeting is to hear public testimony regarding the recommendations that were released on Monday.

Those list of recommendations were taken from that task force report, and that will be submitted prior to the start of the 35th Alaska Legislature, uh, when it starts in January. The public testimony we're going to hear today and the written public comments that we are accepting through December 8th will be used to inform that larger report, and which that larger report has been shared with all task force members for their input. As noted on the— this slide, the latest version of the draft report was shared with all task force members on October 15th. Several members have provided comments and feedback which have been and will continue to be incorporated into the larger report. It is important to note that the recommendations in this draft report were reached by a consensus of members.

Where consensus was lacking, the draft recommendations represent the position of a majority of members of the task force. To date, the task force has held 10 official meetings and visited 19 schools. I would note on October, October 20th, 2025, the task force held a meeting to get recommendations from educated education stakeholders. Several of the task force recommendations come directly out of that meeting. An example is the idea for a separate funding stream for building maintenance and operations that came directly from the Alaska Municipal League.

The task force visited several school districts to talk directly to students. I'll note the 10 official task force meetings and the 19 school visits. They talked directly with students, parents, educators, community leaders about the schools and the educational opportunities that are available to them. Personally, I think those trips were incredibly useful in shedding light on how good public policy can be used by professional educators to teach things to kids and young adults. I don't want to speak for the task force members, but those site visits also showed many of the inadequacies in our public education system and how it is funded.

On the next slide here, you will see just a— these are not all of the recommendations, just some of the recommendations that are spelled out in the document that was made public on Monday. I would like to detail 3 of the most pressing recommendations. I'll skip over this one, or just, well, be very quick. Senator Tobin did a great job on talking about this. I would just note that down in the bottom you'll see the photo of Justin Silverstein with APA Consulting and Larry Picas of Picas, Oden and Associates.

Those are two of the experts that testified about the need for an adequacy study and looking more broadly at the foundation formula. Those might be two of the organizations that would potentially bid, but there are many others. And that is a process that, as Senator Tobin has noted, has been kind of— stakeholders have been looking for since 2014. Uh, I would note here that the LB&A Committee does have the authority to authorize the research. We just need the funding.

As Senator Tobin noted, in the FY27 budget, uh, that was approved by the legislature, it included $400,000 for that public school adequacy study. Governor Dunleavy used his line item veto authority to cut that funding. The task force is recommending the funding for the adequacy study be included in the next available budget bill, whether that's the FY supplemental budget bill or the FY28 operating Budget Bill. Once that funding is secured, LB&A can hire experts to produce that Public Education Adequacy Study. And once again, that is going to inform the decisions that are made by the task force, the governor, and the state legislature for years to come.

In the documents for today's meeting, there's a draft memo from the task force to the LB&A Committee requesting the adequacy study. And essentially they are asking for an update of the 2015 review of Alaska's school funding program. Program that was authorized back in 2014. Moving on to another of the, the recommendations, this is the Energy Cost Reimbursement Program. The state legislature provided $29.1 million in energy relief payments to school districts in the FY27 budget.

Starting in FY28, thanks to the passage of House Bill 28, the state of Alaska can reimburse each school district for its energy costs based on a 3-year average. Estimated cost is about $88 million, uh, that cost is probably going to go up a little bit based on the, the extended high energy costs. The task force recommends full funding for this new energy cost reimbursement program in the FY28 budget and all future budgets of the state of Alaska. And then moving on to the reading proficiency grants, the task force recommends providing school districts with funding to properly implement the reading provisions of the Alaska Reads Act. In 2025, the legislature passed House Bill 57, which included language authorizing the payment of reading proficiency grants.

However, the funding was contingent upon passage of Senate Bill 113 or a similar bill that imposed a tax on highly digitized businesses. While Senate Bill 113 passed the legislature, it was vetoed by the governor and the veto override— the veto override effort was unsuccessful. I'm going to note this slide right here, and I labeled it as you should have been there. On November 10th of last year, several lawmakers, including Senator Tobin and other lawmakers, including Representative Eischeid, who's photographed here, toured Wausau High School, including their fire training program facility. The lengthy conversation with school administrators in that facility, I think, has helped shape the task force's work.

And I just want to provide some context. This, this is a room right here had great big huge air handlers, so it was super loud. So you could hardly hear anything. And this is not the room where this conversation— you would have chose this conversation to happen, but it is where it happened. And it was a fascinating conversation because lawmakers that are in this photo that are covered up here, including Senator Tobin, Representative Ruffridge, and I believe Representative Himschoot are in there as well, all came away impressed by what is available in Wasilla but is not available in other places.

So that's why I included that right there. The final thing is public input is going to be accepted until December 8th. Please submit your comments to [email protected]. That stands for Task Force for Education Funding or [email protected]. Final report will be officially submitted, we hope, on January 19th or before January 19th, which is the first day of the 2027 session.

As Senator Tobin noted, she is going to be returning as Senate Education Committee chair. We have a proposed meeting planned for January 20th to outline the full report. And that's what I have. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mason. I do want to note, uh, I later was on an airplane returning from Fairbanks on a school site visit, uh, and happened to be next to my former UAA flight instructor who now is a captain in Alaska Airlines. He is one of the instructors at the Wasilla High School Fire Department program and is very proud of that work. It's exciting to see how our different systems align and the different education advocates we've had throughout the years and the places that they work. With that, we are now going to move on to public testimony.

I do want to remind folks who are listening online, they can call in to provide their public testimony. The phone numbers, once again, if you're calling from Anchorage, Anchorage, please call 907-563-9085. If you're calling from Juneau, the phone number is 907-586-9085. From all other locales, please call this toll-free number. It is 1-844-586-9085.

Again, you can email the task force on these draft recommendations at [email protected]. That is [email protected]. [email protected]. As we currently do not have a significant number of folks who have signed up for public testimony, I'm going to let folks speak for about 5 minutes. At 5 minutes, I will— hopefully you have concluded your remarks at that point, but at 5 minutes, I will be asking you to wrap up your remarks as we do want to ensure that we do leave time for anyone who does join us online.

With that being said, we're going to start with with the first person we have signed up here in the room, which is Mike Bronson. Mike, if you would please join us here at the dais, identify yourself for the record, and begin your testimony when you are ready.

Good morning. I'm Mike Bronson. I'm here speaking for myself. I live in Anchorage, although I am a volunteer with the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. I want to thank the task force members for all your hard work to provide students what they deserve under the law.

Tom Begich and I had coffee the other day. He reminded me that if we want legislators to provide for what students deserve under the Constitution, then we should talk about constitutional schools a lot. I'm glad to see an adequacy definition as your very first recommendation. Thanks for that. However, the list of needs in that def— draft definition is not enough.

It misses the most critical piece. You should make your adequacy definition fit the state constitution like Judge Gleason did in the case of Moore versus Alaska. Here's the important thing you should take from Judge Gleason and put into your definition: Providing instruction will be constitutionally adequate when each child gets the opportunity to achieve the state's performance standards in English, math, and science, and each child also gets exposure to the state content standards, every single child, regardless of circumstances on the part of the child or the state. To steal from Judge Gleason, you'll know your funding is enough under the Constitution when a substantial majority of students achieve proficiency on the state performance standards. That's the criterion.

It'll be a heavy lift for you legislators to provide schooling to 120,000 children in order for two-thirds of them to pass the state performance assessments. That means doubling the current number of students already proficient in English language arts and math. It means Alaska kids must gain a full grade level and academic skills on average because they're a full grade level behind the U.S. average now. Those are the measures of adequacy and proof of opportunity. To provide students what they deserve under the Constitution, including bringing back 2,000 teachers in order to lower class size, will take $400 to $600 million per year more from you.

Legislators want to fully understand their constitutional duty to students, then the task force should talk about it a lot. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Bronson.

We'll now move on to Lori Ruckdashle from the AAESP, uh, ACSA. I believe she's here in the room. Yes, she is. If you could please identify yourself and begin your testimony when you are ready.

Good morning, Co-chairs Tobin and Himschoot and members of the task force. For the record, my name is Lori Rexdashel. I'm the director of the Alaska Association of Elementary School Principals, part of the Alaska Council of School Administrators. I am speaking on behalf of our membership representing elementary principals across urban, rural, and remote Alaska. I'm also a recently retired Anchorage School District principal.

First, thank you for your thoughtful work and willingness to listen to educators across our state. I'm encouraged by your recommendations around the base student allocation and proposed base facilities allocations. As educators, we recognize that student achievement needs to improve. It is good to see that you recognize that our schools are in need of additional funding to adequately meet the diverse needs of Alaska students. Educators are continually adjusting their practice to meet the increasingly complex needs of our children, but without additional full and timely funding, meeting needs— student needs becomes harder to attain.

Today I want to highlight two areas: early childhood education and Alaska Reads Act. Many Alaska children enter kindergarten without found— foundational literacy skills. If we want stronger reading outcomes by 3rd grade, we need to invest in children before kindergarten. We encourage you to include access to quality early childhood education with sustainable funding by increasing pre-K funding from 0.5 to 1.0 ADM in the funding formula. We also appreciate your recommendation to fund the Alaska Reads Act with incentive grants for student growth.

As a former Title I principal, I was fortunate to have additional federally funded staff supporting literacy instruction, assessments, and interventions. Even with those resources, implementation was a significant undertaking. Many of my colleagues lack those same supports but face the same state requirements. Whether through the proposed $450 reading proficiency grants or ongoing educational funding, schools need adequate equitable, timely, and reliable resources. We welcome accountability for student growth and are committed to improving outcomes.

We need the resources to support that work. Thank you again for your commitment to Alaska's children and schools. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Rookdeschel. We'll now move on to Rudy Pogtlisch.

Close enough. Please correct me for the mispronunciation of your name when you come identify yourself for the record and begin your remarks.

Senator Tobin, that's as good as it gets. Poglic is how I usually pronounce it. My name is Rudy Poglic. I'm from Wasilla and I'm representing myself. People homeschool because the family wants or needs something that a public classroom cannot provide.

Alaska has given those parents reason to stay in the public school system, which has been good for the state and for families. We homeschool our 5 children through Mat-Su Central. My encouragement to this task force is not to mess that up by creating too much standardization.

For instance, my eldest and our fourth— fourth-born daughters ripped the lid off verbal sections on standardized tests. But both of them were very late readers. It turns out there's a family history of not reading well until age 8 and then becoming very verbally skilled. Unfortunately, got it from me, I suspect, but I did score in the 95th percentile on the GRE. But I was one of those late bloomers.

My first daughter had no pressure because we were living in Southern Africa at that time, and she enjoyed school and graduated with high honors. Our fourth daughter was in Alaska at that formative age, and the pressure of failing early reading assessments produced a significant negative attitude in her towards being taught that we still struggle with. But later, past that year 8 mark, she became a voracious reader. But she would have benefited from a customized testing plan, and she did benefit from flexible curriculum and work sample options. She would have, on the other hand, done very poorly in a traditional classroom where she wouldn't have measured up for her first 3 years of school.

Our eldest girl became an excellent seamstress because of the flexibility of the homeschool program at Mat-Su Central. She currently does alterations at a shop on the Kenai. When she leaves, the owner has explained that she plans to close down her alterations business because it's impossible to find workers with her skill level at the needed— at her skill level. Our daughter developed that skill during junior and high school because we could customize her curriculum.

Again, parents pull kids from public school classes when the curriculum and standards aren't good matches for their children. And I would like to think that your task force and parents are on the same page in desiring that children blossom in their skills and interests. Homeschool has worked wonders for many children, and we ask that you not over-standardize it and take away that advantage. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. We'll now move on to Ms. Carolyn Storm of the Coalition for Education Equity. Ms. Caroline Storm, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your remarks when you are ready. Good morning. My name is Caroline Storm.

I'm the executive director of the Coalition for Education Equity. I want to start by thanking this task force for the amount of time and dedication that you've put into developing these recommendations. I find these recommendations incredibly thoughtful, and I know the amount of struggle it has been within the task force to come to some level of consensus on the recommendations. I have very— I have two very small recommendations. In your definition of adequacy, please add the words code compliant to safe environments.

The term safe environment is a little too broad, and I think that if we had the term code compliant in that definition, we would not see the level of disrepair and, um, yeah, just lack of safe environments that currently exist for some of our students in some of our school districts. And secondly, I would like to just say, if you have not had time yet to read the written testimony provided by Rosalyn Grady-Weitsch that was submitted last night, I believe, I would like to just echo that within that testimony is a strong request for parity and equity in your adequacy definitions, and I think that that is lacking. I don't have specific recommendations for what terminology to add. I will provide written testimony later in that regard, but I think that when we think of what some of our students are not being exposed to and what they are being exposed to on the road system. There is incredible inequity in the way our children are currently being educated across the state.

So if you could consider that, and in your— also your focus on CTE, also understand that there are lots of kids who would benefit from exposure to the arts, whether that be music or theater or some sort of other artistic pursuit.

They are not being offered that in the same way that a lot of kids are on the road system. So thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Storm.

We'll now move on to Madeline Aguilar, who is joining us here in the room. Now representing ASD, has had a bit of a career change. Ms. Aguilar, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your testimony when you are ready.

Good morning. For the record, I'm Dr. Madeline Aguilar, Deputy Superintendent for the Anchorage School District and President of the Alaska Superintendents Association. First, I want to thank you for the significant work over the past 18 months listening to testimony, reviewing data, and hearing directly from educators, families, and communities across the state. Uh, as you consider your recommendations in your report and future legislation, I want to emphasize that Alaska's education leaders are asking for stability, predictability, and a commitment to the long-term health of Alaska's public education system. The Alaska Council of School Administrators, in collaboration with the Alaska Association of School Boards and NEA Alaska have identified 4 priorities that we believe are essential to moving Alaska's schools forward.

First, pass education funding early. We ask the legislature to pass an early education appropriation with at least $254.6 million BSA increase above the existing formula by February 15th, 2027, to address inflation since fiscal year 2017. ASD's legislative priorities also call for restoring purchasing power to protect class sizes and classroom supports. The state's budget timeline needs to align with the timeline schools are required to operate under. Second, restore a defined benefit pension system for public employees.

With adequate school funding and a competitive, predictable retirement benefit, districts could recruit and retain the people our students depend on and maintain smaller class sizes. Third, end the cycle of uncertainty through forward funding. Our families and staff need to know which programs and supports they can count on beyond the next, next budget cycle. And fourth, invest in major maintenance and school construction. As a former rural Alaska superintendent, I have seen firsthand some of the frightening pitfalls of the current model.

But this isn't a rural versus urban problem. This is a state of Alaska problem. For example, ASD alone has $1.5 billion in deferred maintenance. If we were to be replacing our roofs on an average life cycle, we would be replacing 3 roofs every year. Student nutrition also needs dedicated support.

Due to rising costs, there are 11 Alaska school districts who have now opted out of the federal school nutrition program. And finally, fund the Alaska Reads Act. This includes pre-K students inside the funding formula at, at least a full ADM instead of the 0.5. Alaska's investment in public education is an investment in Alaska's economic future and in the strength of every community in our state. We appreciate the task force work and urge you to carry these priorities forward as you develop your final recommendations and legislation.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Aguilar. We do have a question from Co-chair Himschoot. She asks if you could help us understand how you arrived at the $254 million number.

So that was work that Dr. Parady has done, and I really wish she was in person here today to talk you through that so she could cite all of her sources. But it was based off of the inflation, but we used the FY 2017 number, and that was what we really wanted to be clear on. We would be happy if you would want to follow up with the committee with that information, and we will disseminate it to members. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you for your testimony. I do want to just make note of folks, as I have mentioned before, this is a culmination of all the recommendations from a larger report. Uh, you will know in the culmination of these recommendations, we do direct folks to 2023, uh, teacher retention recruitment survey that had several recommendations that were listed at the very top, including a return to a defined benefit, competitive pay, uh, stronger teacher professional development, and a leadership pipeline. Uh, in part of our draft recommendations, we say adopt all of the top recommendations from the 2023 report. Uh, we recognize that this might be confusing to the public.

We were trying to be succinct in our report to not ensure that this document was 20, 30, 40 pages for the public to try to digest. Just so folks have that information. We will now move on to our last in-person testifier. Once again, if you would like to testify and you are here in the room, please sign up on the list by the door. We have Theresa Obermeyer.

Ms. Obermeyer, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your remarks when you are ready. Good morning, Senator Tobin, and good morning, Representative Himschoot, that I don't believe I met in person, but I know she's very deeply interested in our Alaska children and in education. So I commend both of you. I wanted to start by congratulating Mr. Bronson for talking about Judge Sharon Gleason. Please, I refer you to Moore v. State of Alaska, on page 176 of that lawsuit, my husband's lead case in the Summary of American Law is cited.

At the time, Ms. Gleason was a superior court judge. She rose to the federal bench off denial of my husband's case. My husband's case is the lead case in the Summary of American Law that is every lawyer and judge in the United States of America's stock and trade. I am so proud of that. I, madam, am a judge's daughter, and what could have been possible in this state that is a frontier state that is so young is unimaginable to me.

But it's all happened. I've been on the Anchorage School Board. I wanted to mention, uh, the main thing that I'm really worried about now is, of course, a new day is dawning. That is the wonderful part of this. But what we have to again focus on is the Alaska bench and bar.

Where is the decision on this allotment case? You see, a lot of families are now signing up for homeschool. Then they get money. And I think it's the student-based allocation, which I think is like $660 a student. And they give that money to a private school.

What is going to happen when this court rules? And when is this court going to rule? I don't understand. I think I think this has been going on for at least 3 years. I truly commend you, and I did not want to take too much of your time.

I'm not an expert on what the recommendations are, but really, people live in Alaska because their children can get a good education. I'm so pleased. Our 4 children have been very successful because they went to the Anchorage School District, and I want to have a shout out to all their wonderful teachers over the period of time our 4 children were in school. I'll brag lastly, we now have an orthopedic surgeon, we have an emergency medicine physician, we have an occupational therapist, and we have a doctorate in physical therapy. They're all very successful, they're all in healthcare, and they're all married to— 2 are married to family nurse practitioners and 2 to, um, RNs.

But, and I just wanted to say that I'm, I'm always so proud of my children because I couldn't do this today if my children hadn't succeeded in spite of what could have been possible. It has been unbelievable. Oh, lastly, I want to mention I have a Facebook group, Elect Alaska Attorney General, and what we're trying to do, Senator, is we're trying to locally get an initiative petition that will be on our April 6th 2027 ballot to ask that the citizens of Anchorage support having an elected Attorney General. I'm working very hard on that. We have to get 7,200 signatures.

But you see, just to mention, and I think you might already know, in order to change our Constitution, we have to only get a two-thirds vote of each of the houses of the state legislature. In my life, that's impossible. I've been trying to do this since the '90s and nobody does anything. So I'm trying to go We have an initiative petition. And it's all an educational process to explain— people don't focus on lawyers.

I don't know. You know, do you know the expression fear reigns in the hearts of men? It's really true. I ain't afraid. I'm a judge's daughter.

And I grew up in a courthouse. They're not going to scare me one bit. But you wouldn't believe what could have been possible by these lawyers since I've lived in Alaska after having been elected to the Anchorage School Board. Thank you for hearing me. Did you or Representative Himschoot have a question?

We do not, but thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Obermeyer. Seeing as there's no other testifiers here in the room, we'll now move online.

We have Kendra Cruz from Palmer calling in. Miss Cruz, if you can hear me, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your testimony when you are ready.

Hello, my name is Kendall Cruz. I'm living in Palmer currently. I'm representing only myself. I'm a mother of 5, 3 of which I use the correspondence schools to home educate. And as a point of information, I also serve on the Mat-Su Valley School District School Board, so I'm very familiar with the statutes on education and education funding and correspondence schools and charter schools.

I also understand the finance part, and I understand the way that the schools are regulated and the policies and procedures. So I'm calling— I have many comments about this. I will submit written testimony about Variety of thoughts, but I'm going to focus on one in particular. I've heard a lot about we need to address the diverse needs of the state for these students, that we want equity for students, that we need to meet their needs. And yet the reform that I see in this document is about repealing or forcing correspondence students back into a brick-and-mortar measure comparing them to the failed government-forced policies during COVID that forced distance brick-and-mortar learning, which is not the same as correspondence education.

I don't know a single other correspondence family that's using the kind of methods that the state and feds forced on school districts to use during COVID which I also agree was an abysmal failure of state policy. For a point of interest, my children are all above proficient. They all participate in a variety of different standardized and nationally normed tests. My kindergartner this morning was working on his second and third grade math skills, telling time, counting back coins and money, working on his multiplication tables. He's 5.

He would not be able to be served properly in an equitable and fair way for his needs in a traditional brick-and-mortar. It's not possible. A teacher can't take 30 kids, 25 kids, and have kids that are exceptionally ahead and gifted and have them doing that kind of work. We don't have hardly any ability grouping even in the state except for in our charter schools. So when I hear that we want to meet the diverse needs, but we also want to repeal statutes because We're accusing correspondence families and schools of not following the law, which requires curriculum to be consistent with state standards, and it is, and it's evaluated by more than one person, including the supervising teacher.

So what we're saying is the supervising teachers don't do their job when we say that these curriculums are not approved. We also know, and it was it was pointed out in a public meeting, I want to say a month ago, that if you took out all of the correspondence student test scores from the Mat-Su School District from their total, it would drop the proficiency rate by 2%.

1 In 5 kids is using a correspondence school in Alaska. That is a huge percentage of our student population for us to be highly concerned about repealing or reducing the access to these programs for students that need them. And I think that's a huge mistake. I think that unfortunately it seems as if this task force was given information that was either incorrect about how these programs work or inaccurate from people who don't understand it, or maybe an admission of people not doing it correctly. The way that they're supposed to be doing it according to the law.

But that is certainly not the experience of many correspondence families, if not the most. And I understand there will be exceptions, just like there are exceptions in brick-and-mortar schools and charter schools and families. But to restrict access to these programs would be to ensure that you're going to see an enrollment drop. Which means you're serving even fewer students. And while we're watching historic birth rate collapse in Alaska, and we're going to see the unenrollment, um, rise as time goes on, I don't think that we should be looking at one of the most successful school choice programs that people are saying they want and are encouraged to use by trying to reduce it, control it, and force it back into, I think it was the fold of the brick and mortar.

So I'm highly concerned, and I'm also concerned about the wording, excuse my little baby on my hip, that parents are abusing or enjoying rights that other parents don't have.

All parents have the right to opt out of questionable learning materials, Miss Cruz, you have 5 minutes. If you could please wrap up your comments. Yes, thank you. Um, forced funds parents don't have any more parental rights than anyone else, and I don't want to see the parental rights of all parents in Alaska restricted under this guise.

Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Cruz. I do have a question for you. I'm looking at page 9 of the draft recommendations, and I see the section that says the task force recommends school districts invest investigate effective methods for incorporating public correspondence programs into brick-and-mortar frameworks.

Is this the section you're referencing when you say force or repeal correspondence statutes?

That is the section where I'm talking about forcing them into a brick-and-mortar framework. Thank you. And if maybe there's a different, different interpretation of what that means, I would love to have that out there so that families could know what exactly the intention of that line is. Thank you. Thank you for that clarity.

We'll now move on to Anchorage where we have Amanda Thompson, who is the president of the Alaska Public Charter Association. Miss Thompson, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your testimony when you are ready.

Good morning. My name is Amanda Thompson. I'm the president of the Alaska Public Charter School Association.. And we're working with the National Public Charter School Alliance. You really just help our vision for all Alaska students to have excellent public school options and really by focusing on high-quality charter schools that meet the diverse learning needs across all of our communities in Alaska.

So charter schools exemplify Alaskans having agency in our students' education. The Task Force's recommendations could really look to the example of our charter schools. Which are all public schools, for a model of how to approach these really complex education questions that you've been wrestling with. And we want that. We all agree we want to do that with wisdom and true empathy for our students.

Really reading through this report, I'd like to zoom out on this big picture. After I read the introduction, it appears that many assumptions were made that can block a wise and empathetic understanding of what adequate education is. I'd like to just continue to kind of zoom out on that. The adequate education, right, is really judged by a student obtaining knowledge, I would offer. Obtaining a knowledge, obtaining citizenship, obtaining local community values, obtaining creative and critical thinking skills.

For me, as a certified teacher, doing my studies at University of Alaska Southeast is really It was good to see that my effectiveness as a teacher wasn't what I put out there, it was what did the students actually obtain. So, I'd like to see the task force really look at that. What does it mean for a student to get adequate education? There's some kind of obtaining of it, not just the delivery. So, there are many ways that our amazing public charter schools are showing this, are really effective in students obtaining.

These inequalities. I saw my own children flourish at their charter school in all of these things. Um, and I thought— I judged that they were getting an adequate education with what they obtained. So with the high concern that we all share for student funding, I'm curious why the task force didn't mention the Revolutionary Education Freedom Tax Credit program. Um, I didn't see this at all in the report and would really ask for our community members you look at this and include this, as this will be starting to be available to nearly all Alaska students in January.

So this Fox Credit Scholarship is going to allow individual students utilize scholarship funds in a wide variety of ways, many of which can provide significant funding to the public schools across our state. Anchorage School Board has already been talking about, you know, the potential of this, really using millions of dollars to help our low- and middle-income students I encourage the committee members to meet with our association partners regarding this amazing funding source and get those numbers and incorporate those in your recommendations. A scholarship is a good place to start for that. I was also curious why analysis was not conducted on districts to see if there were any bumpy spots in dollars getting to our hardworking teachers and students. You can look to the example of our exemplary parent governance boards among our public charter schools answers to these kind of questions, but they ask their school leaders to make sure that funding is helping students.

All of the charters, they have to really carefully steward every single dollar to help their students and teachers. Nothing disappears. It's all very accounted for. How is the task force looking to help districts do it carefully as well? Lastly, our charter schools would greatly appreciate the funding aligning with their fiscal year timelines.

Our parents are all volunteers, and any streamlining from the state calendar helps them have more time to spend with their families to help them thrive. They're doing a lot of heavy lifting, and outcomes are amazing. Um, I just ask for those considerations. So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Thompson. We'll now move to Juneau, where we have Mary Marks. Miss Marks, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your testimony when you are ready. You have 5 minutes.

My name is Ms. Kazzoge Mary Marx. I'm Tlingit from Tukwun, and I'm also a tribal citizen. I'm a resident of Juneau and a graduate of the public school system, and I'm currently pursuing my master's degree. I served on the Anchorage School Board, the Association of Alaska School Boards, and on the National Education Committee. Through those experiences, I have spent many years working on education policy and governance, and I've seen many reports addressing these same challenges.

I appreciate the work of the Task Force on Education Funding and support many of the recommendations related to funding stability, facilities, teacher retention, and the word adequate education. I would like to see if we can change adequate to an excellent education for our children to have these opportunities. However, I must admit that reading this report was very frustrating for me at many different levels. We know that these are challenges that have been challenges for years. I've spent many years working on education governance, and while I appreciate the work that went into this report, I am less interested in another report telling us what the problems are and more interested in seeing meaningful action that gives our students the tools, opportunities, and support they need to succeed.

As someone who has worked in education and as Alaska Native woman who has experienced Alaska's education system firsthand, I know our students can achieve great things. The question is not whether our students can succeed. The question is whether we will provide the resources, leadership, and commitment necessary to help them reach their full potential. My hope is that this report becomes a roadmap for action rather than another report that just sits on the shelf. Our students deserve nothing less.

And I really would like to emphasize that I appreciate this report, and I'm being very hopeful once again in this education arena that I've been involved in that this does become a roadmap for success. And I do realize that a lot of times it can be out of the reach of the hands of our legislators and because of the governor's vetoes and what he or she does. But it's still— I appreciate the opportunity that being in this report as something that our legislatures just never give up on and still keep pursuing and keep reaching out and keep knocking on the doors. I'm, I'm being hopeful this time around that this becomes a strong roadmap for success for our children. Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Marks. We're going to take a brief at ease. Brief at ease.

And we're back on the record. We are now joined by Superintendent Halasny from the Lower Kuskokwim School District. Mr. Halasny actually welcomed task force members on a site visit out to the LKSD region. We were able to visit Nipakiak, Nipaskiak, and Quinnahook, along with some of the other excellent charter school options and brick-and-mortar and CTE programs offered in that district. Quite incredible things happening out in the Lower Kuskokwim School District, and we are excited for him to join us here at the task force this morning.

Superintendent Hlasny, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your remarks when you are ready. Good morning. Can you hear me? We can.

Good morning, co-chair Tobin, co-chair Himschoot, and members of the task force.

For the record, I'm Dr. Jason Halasny, the superintendent of the Lower Kuskokwim School District. Thank you for your work this year and for visiting our schools. It was just such a wonderful visit, and we appreciate that. So thank you. I want to talk about hope.

LKSD serves 27 schools across 22,000 square miles of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Yukon Delta. Many of them are reachable only by plane or boat. This fall, I asked our students and communities what they hope for. Students asked for welding, carpentry, mechanics, aviation, among other careers. They want to be college and career ready, and they dream of becoming nurses, dentists, hunting guides, and all the various things.

They asked for more Alaska Native teachers. Our students need learning that connects to real work close to home from teachers who stay long enough to know every child. A year ago, remnants of Typhoon Halong destroyed most of Kitnuk and badly damaged Kwigh. Our two schools sheltered about 900 people that night. And several other coastal and tundra communities from Knightmute to Napakiak are still recovering.

Thank you for your report and thank you for your recommendations. I appreciated— you got many things right in the report. There's a few things that I will definitely highlight and ask that they move forward. Adopting a definition of adequate education and funding the adequacy study. Your definition includes culturally responsive schools, career and technical exploration, and the chance to take part in every student activity.

And that's what our communities are asking for. That's what I hear when I visit schools, when I survey families, when I speak with people in the community. That's what they want. Make funding stable timely and consistent. Adjust the BSA for inflation the same way you budget for other state agencies.

Fund facility operations outside the BSA and put life and safety repairs first. For example, in the Pockyack, our teacher housing is close to falling into the river. And fully fund energy cost reimbursement in FY28 and beyond. There are two urgent needs that are not in the report yet. We would ask, I would ask, that we add a disaster hold harmless provision so displaced students stay funded while their communities rebuild.

Please take on teacher housing alongside your rural staffing recommendation. In rural Alaska, we cannot hire a teacher we cannot house. And teachers stay where they have hope. Hope needs something to stand on. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Superintendent Elasny. I do just want to take a moment, as the task force was able to visit, uh, the Bethel area, and we saw some incredible locally grown teachers. Uh, the Lower Kuskokwim School District has invested in their local labor force, ensuring that their educators receive the highest credentialing possible, a Type A certificate while teaching in their indigenous language. One thing that many of the task force members were very surprised to learn is about the dual language programs that are available in the Lower Kuskokwim School District.

Students there are learning in their indigenous language. They are becoming competent and capable adults with also holding on to their indigenous cultural heritage, which is just very exciting to see. And one thing that we often don't talk enough about, I believe, in our education system is the successes and the diamonds, and that was definitely one for the task force members. So again, thank you again, Superintendent Halasney. It was an incredible site visit.

All right, well, thank you, uh, thank you for the visit, and thank you for just allowing me to testify and, and share some information today. Thank you. Thank you. We will now move back here into the room where we are joined by Mr. Gray from ASDIV.

Mr. Gray, if you could please join us here at the dais, identify yourself for the record, and begin your remarks when you are ready.

Co-chair Tobin, co-chair Himschoot, and members of the task force. I wasn't sure if anybody was online. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. For the record, my name is Doug Gray, and I'm the professional development director for the Alaska Staff Development Network, a division of the Alaska Council for School Administrators. And I've worked as an educator and administrator in both rural and urban Alaska for over 25 years.

We strongly support our recommend— your recommendation that an adequate education includes qualified educators who are given time and support for professional development. When a district adopts a new reading curriculum, teachers need to plan together, practice new instructional routines, and look at student work to see which students need more help. This is how a new curriculum makes a difference in the classroom. For over 40 years, ASDN has been a trusted source to provide high-quality professional development for Alaskan educators. We pride ourselves on listening to our districts and responding to what they need.

We hear from educators through surveys, program evaluations, and regular conversations with district curriculum leaders. When a need comes up during the school year, we can move quickly to put together a workshop or a webinar to support the identified need. We also offer self-paced courses for educators whose schedules, travel costs, and limited substitute coverage makes it hard to attend a live session. ASDN course offerings are aligned with the Alaska State Standards to ensure educators have access to high-quality professional development in areas such as science of reading, civics, math, and multicultural studies. We also help provide districts to understand what they need through knowing what best practices and cutting-edge professional development— think of AI.

Our Alaska MTSS Effective Instruction Conference is an important way that we respond to the districts asking for a need or their need. We bring national experts and educators, Alaskan educators together to share practical, proven approaches to reading instruction, math instruction, classroom behavior, and other priority districts have identified. For example, when teachers ask for help teaching several grades in one classroom, Juneau, we built a dedicated multi-age strand in our upcoming conference. Some needs call for support over time. Through our MTSS refresh project, we helped 18 districts plan to strengthen early reading instruction and support students who need additional help.

In our current partnership with the University of Alaska Anchorage, we help district teams look at how their academic, behavioral, and mental health supports fit together to decide what's to improve I ask you to keep in support for professional development to have a qualified educator in front of each child in the definition of an adequate education and to include the cost of providing both in the proposed equity and adequacy study. Statewide partners like ASDN can help districts share expertise and make professional learning accessible. Districts also need the resources to give teachers the time, the work, the workday to learn together. And to put new practices to work and to see how those practices help their students. Thank you for your recognizing the support Alaskan educators in this part of providing an adequate education for every child in Alaska.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Gray. And in full disclosure to the public, I recently had my institutional review board protocols approved, which means I will be researching actively alternative teacher preparation programs where this component of the task force report is incredibly important to me, not only for my doctoral work, but also because I think it's such a critical component of our education system writ large. Awesome.

We stand as a resource if you need us. Thank you. Thank you. We'll now move back, uh, online where we are joined by Superintendent Weber from Valdez City Schools. Mr. Weber, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your testimony when you are ready.

Hi, my name is Jason Weber, Superintendent of Valdez City Schools. I'd like to start by saying good morning and thank you to our co-chairs Tobin and Himschoot for— and members of the task force on education funding. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today and the extensive work your committee has put into developing these draft recommendations over the past year and a half. Aghaaagha. I strongly support the framework laid out in this draft report because it tackles the root causes of financial instability our schools face year to year and provides a clear roadmap to improve Alaska schools.

Specifically, I urge the task force and the up-and-coming legislature to prioritize 4 core solutions from the document: predictable, timely funding Basing state funding on a 3-year enrollment average and finalizing school budgets earlier in the spring will allow schools to more efficiently plan and execute budgets and focus on hiring and retaining teachers. Our schools—. Our students deserve continuity in the classroom, and school districts need reliable numbers so they can plan responsibly before summer begins. Facility funding rising energy costs and improving conditions for our classrooms. Keeping a roof intact or heating the building during the Alaskan winter should never require cutting teachers, class offerings, or student support or student activities.

Uh, reining in rising insurance costs, skyrocketing health and property insurance premiums have become a massive drain on district budgets I strongly support reducing healthcare expenses to districts. Uh, districts should not have to absorb runaway insurance hikes at the expense of student learning. For perspective, in Valdez, we are looking at a 30% increase to our insurance for FY28. Uh, we took a 20% increase to our insurance last fiscal. Establishing clear standards and inflation protection.

Putting a clear definition of educational adequacy into state law and tying per-student funding to inflation will give lawmakers an objective benchmark to follow. It ensures the state upholds its constitutional responsibility to provide every child in Alaska with a quality education no matter where they live. In summary, my hope is that this document is used and work is done on the legislative side to improve the areas identified in the report. I look forward to kids in Alaska receiving the benefits of your hard work. Thank you again for allowing me to speak.

I urge you to advance these priorities into legislation during the 2027 legislative session. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Webber, and we look forward to seeing you again in Juneau, uh, this upcoming year. Uh, we'll now move to Anchorage where we are joined, uh, remotely by Jennifer Schmidt, who's the director of the Alaska Educator Retention and Recruitment Center. Ms. Schmidt, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your testimony when you are ready.

Thank you very much, Co-Chairs Tobin and Himschoot, and members of the Task Force. For the record, my name is Jennifer Schmidt. I'm the Director of the Alaska Educator Retention and Recruitment Center, or AERC, which is a division of the Alaska Council of School Administrators. Thank you for the opportunity to be here today. I've spent more than 30 years working in Alaska education.

I want to start by thanking you for your time and the thoughtful work you've put into these recommendations. We appreciate your proactive support and approach to addressing the many challenges facing Alaska schools. Thank you, Senator Tobin, for clarifying earlier that the task force embraced all of the TRR Committee's recommendations, and we thank you for your acknowledgement of that work and the importance of staying focused on it. We are also working on carrying forward many of those recommendations. The task force recommendations recognize the importance of qualified educators stable funding, and addressing the concerns identified in Alaska's Teacher Retention and Recruitment Survey.

We respectfully ask that educator retention and recruitment receive greater emphasis and be included as important short-term priorities. Alaska is experiencing an educator shortage crisis right now, the worst in our history. At the start of this school year, districts reported 311 first-day teacher vacancies and 339 teachers on emergency certificates. Districts are struggling to fill classrooms, particularly in rural and remote communities, and special education positions. Each unfilled position affects children waiting for a teacher, educators taking on additional responsibilities, and administrators working to keep instruction consistent.

Alaska's relying heavily on international teachers. This is expensive for districts. There are currently 267 teachers on H-1B visas and 204 on J-1 visas in Alaska schools. Of note is that in some districts we are seeing increases in student achievement as visas— as teachers that are on visas improve retention rates due to them staying for 3 to 6 years on a visa. So that retention piece is really important for success.

Through ARC, we work directly with districts to recruit candidates, support hiring, and help educators transition successfully into Alaska schools. In fact, we are the only organization in the state that's providing this comprehensive support. Our work includes a statewide job board, recruitment events, candidate screening, certification and practice support, and assistance for edu— international educators. We also provide opportunities for teachers to connect and receive ongoing support. We're grateful that the legislature approved funding for this work 2 years in a row, including support through the Department of Labor to operate the statewide educator job board.

That board builds on years of state-supported recruitment infrastructure that previously was housed at UA. Unfortunately, funding for recruitment and retention— the job board would be— and the job board was vetoed by the governor two consecutive years. We ask that the Educator Retention and Recruitment Center be included in your task force recommendations. These vetoes impacted our ability to provide consistent statewide support. We are the organization providing this combination of direct retention and recruitment services to our school districts.

Your proposed definition of an adequate education includes instruction by qualified educators. Delivering on that commitment requires a funded plan to recruit those educators and help them stay. Please strengthen these recommendations by calling for sustained statewide recruitment and retention funding, including the educator job board, coordinated hiring assistance and meaningful support to early career and new-to-Alaska educators. Alaska's children need qualified, supported teachers in their classrooms today and every day. Thank you for your work and your consideration.

Thank you. Thank you, Miss Schmidt. Uh, seeing as there's no other folks here in the room, if you have joined us here in the room and you wish to testify, there is a sign-up there by the door. We will now move to a telephonic testifier. We are joined by Glenn Beagle from Anchorage.

Mr. Mr. Beagle, I apologize if I mispronounced your last name. If you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your remarks when you are ready.

Hi. Yeah, no, you said my name correctly. The name is Glenn Beagle, and I'm just representing myself, although I have been vice president of the Alaska Charter School Association in the past, and I've started charter school here in Anchorage. Anchorage Family Partnership Charter School. So I participated in the generation of the charter school law and am very well-versed in its effects and its benefits.

I guess what I want to talk about is whenever you have a group that controls rules exclusively a marketplace, it's always bad. You know, when you drive down the road and you have two lanes, right, people can sort themselves out into slow and fast. But then once we get back to one lane, the slowest person governs the progression of traffic. Competition always, always makes things better. When you or if you change the ability for people to register with schools out of their boundaries, you will limit competition.

The people who will be hurt will be the poorest and those least able to adjust to the situation. Oftentimes they have the worst schools. They have have the greatest reason to access competition. You know, I had a family member who was a teacher, and she's a very big supporter of public education, did not like people selecting other schools. When it turned out that she was in a school and her kids were in a school that did not perform very well, she moved.

And that's the reality. When you restrict competition limit competition, you restrict it and limit it to those who cannot afford to choose better. So you should keep that in mind, that the people who you are serving are those people who are least able to address a poorly performing school that they have been assigned to and that they happen to live within the boundaries of. And you should let them and encourage them to enjoy competition and ensure that their children are best served by the situation that best serves their needs. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Beagle. We're going to take a brief at ease. I apologize for folks who might be trying to follow us online. Currently, AKLEG.gov is down, so we'll be taking a brief at ease until we're able to, to rectify that issue.

Brief at ease.

And we're back on the record here in Senate Education. We apologize that there seems to be some technology issues. From our understanding, there is a statewide Microsoft error which is impacting many of our online systems. If you are on akleg.gov and cannot access the livestream or if it's disrupted, there is a Venmo access that if you search, you should be able to find that link. Additionally, gavel to gavel is always available for folks.

That Vimeo address is https://vimio.com/event/6351719.

Please use that if you're having any issues accessing this livestream. Otherwise, we are still recording and we will have this information for folks to reflect back upon if they are unable to continue to follow along in real time. We are going to continue on with our public testimony. We are now joined on the telephone by Superintendent Robbins from the Bristol Bay Borough School District. Mr. Robbins, if you can hear us, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your testimony when you are ready.

Mike, can you hear us?

All right, we will come back. Good morning, Chair Tobin. Can you hear me now? We can hear you now. If you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your testimony when you are ready.

Yes, for the record, my name is Michael Robbins, Superintendent of Schools for the Bristol Bay Borough School District. I am testifying today as a member of the Alaska Council of School Administrators board. We want to thank the task force for your willingness to hear from education leaders and community stakeholders and for your work over the past year developing recommendations to improve public education. We appreciate your recommendations regarding full and forward funding. Providing school districts with predictable and sustainable funding is essential as we work to maintain programs, retain quality staff, and improve student achievement and learning.

We also appreciate your recognition of the increase in energy costs facing Alaska adult school districts, particularly in Western Alaska. These costs continue to strain our budgets, forcing districts to make difficult decisions about classroom resources just to keep our buildings heated and our lights on. In some rural communities, heating fuel prices have exceeded $10 per gallon. We ask that you continue to fully fund the energy cost provision passed in HB 28 in the last legislative session. We also ask the legislature to address increasing student transportation costs.

Since 2016, transportation costs for school districts in Alaska have increased approximately 40%. While transportation funding has only increased by 20%. The growing gap continues to force districts to divert resources from the classroom to convert— to cover transportation costs. It is equally important that we continue to look at ways to expand our career and technical education opportunities for secondary students, especially in rural Alaska. Regional programs such as the Bristol Bay Regional Career and Technical Education program demonstrate what is possible when school districts work together, share resources, and provide opportunities that individual districts may not be able to offer on their own.

The state should consider ways to incentivize regional CTE programming through grants that support 1- or 2-week intensive instructional— instructor stipends, student travel, and startup costs for these new programs. These opportunities help students develop valuable skills in the school career pathways and prepare to enter the workforce after graduation. We appreciate the task force recognition that local contributions are a complex issue and deserve continued discussion, particularly with the new law limiting annual increases and require local contributions to 4%. I recognize the importance of providing stability and predictability for municipalities as they plan their budgets and meet their meet the many needs of their communities, but we as districts also need to be able to do that. Our boroughs and municipalities are important partners in supporting public education, and we appreciate the commitment they make to our schools.

At the same time, as we look at education funding across Alaska, it is important to understand the relationship between increased property, property valuations, municipal revenues, and local contributions to school districts. Statewide data shows that property value and municipal tax collection have grown significantly over the past decade, while local school operating contributions have been increasing at a lower rate. This presents an opportunity for the state, municipalities, and school districts to work together to better understand these trends and how they affect education funding. It is also important to recognize the 4% limitation also applies to increase in required local contributions while additional voluntary contributions are governed by separate statutory limits. Communities across Alaska have different financial resources challenges, and any discussion about local contribution needs to recognize these differences.

As we move forward, I encourage the Task Force to continue reviewing local contribution requirements and impact of these statutory limitations. Our goal is to maintain self-partnerships with state, local governments, and school districts while ensuring that all Alaska students have quality access to educational opportunities regardless of where they live. Before making additional changes to education funding, it's important that we continue to look carefully at how these decisions affect school districts across our state. Alaska communities are very different, and we need to ensure that our funding systems recognize these differences. We appreciate your incredible amount of work on this and the task force and your willingness to listen and those of us working directly with students.

Koyaanisqatsiinuk. Biwa. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Robinson.

I do want to note for folks who may be unaware, the school district that Superintendent Robinson oversees is one of the very few in the nation that uses an aircraft every day to transport their students to and from schools. Alaska is a very diverse state. We have very diverse education needs, and in some places you need a boat or a plane to get to school. Uh, with that, we'll move to here in-person testimony. We are joined by Katie Perot with the Anchorage School District and ALASBO.

And I will let Miss Perot unpack the ALASBO acronym for us. Miss Perot, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your testimony when you are ready. Yes, good morning, uh, Chair Tobin and members of the committee. Thank you for giving us this opportunity. My name is Katie Perot I am the president of the Alaska Association of School Business Officials, and that organization essentially supports all of our finance business operations side of the house for all of the districts across Alaska.

I also serve as the senior director of the Office of Management and Budget for Anchorage School District, as well as being on several boards in the community. So I— first of all, I just want to issue my thanks to the task force. The work that you guys did was so critical and valuable, and I especially want to give my thanks for actually going out into our communities and schools and seeing what's happening on the ground. I think that sometimes we're a little bit disconnected from what's going on in some of the areas around Alaska, and seeing what's actually happening in the challenging changes there. As part of that work, I think that you've come up with some really amazing recommendations for modernizing and updating, um, how we're funding schools in Alaska.

I think we can all agree that the foundation formula did a really good job of establishing a baseline when it was created and ensures that there's equitable funding amongst our districts. However, it's very much now, uh, It's, I think, increasingly known that the formula was built for the past. It really was built for a point in time that we are no longer operating in. So I want to address a couple of the recommendations. I think that some of the recommendations, actually all of the recommendations, are spot on for how we need to modernize the formula.

One of the things that I think is really especially prescient for us is to separate out facilities dollars competing with classroom. That's something that very much has taken a toll on our systems. We have aging facilities in the state of Alaska. The average age of a school building is 40+ years old. We all know that it costs more to service and maintain a building that is of that age.

Anchorage. So taking a look at how we can separate out those costs and be able to provide for the health and welfare in that area is really critical to our districts. Additionally, I think some of the other areas such as transportation where the state has over time fallen woefully behind in being able to fund for that program. Some of the expenses that districts that districts incur to maintain and provide a service have increased far outside of inflation. So taking a look at some of those components individually and adjusting the metrics by which we allocate costs to cover that service, I think, is really critical.

Additionally, we need to take a look at how we can be a little bit more agile. So the adequacy study for us is going to be really, really, really really critical to digging into some of the other costs of operations for districts across the state, specifically in the area where our formula doesn't really account for changes in cost, let alone changes in our subpopulations. So prior to the BSA being increased by the legislature in '26, doing a 10-year look back on what the special needs factor, that 0.2 factor, generated for Alaska districts over that 10-year period, because that factor is attached to enrollment decline and, um, a flat BSA, that factor produced $14 million less to school districts while our SPED population in Alaska grew by 14%. So we know that there's some aspects of the formula that, um, have faltered over time. And so we would really encourage a look at that in the adequacy study.

And so just to close, there's lots we can be thankful for. I think personally, for the first time in a long time, I'm excited about how Alaska can innovate and come up with a modernized system for funding our education system so that we can provide students more of what they deserve. So I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Parrott.

Uh, because we have you here and you do represent LASBO, uh, one thing we have heard from many folks is about how they get granular level data about how their schools, uh, provide funding to, uh, the classroom, to facilities, to supplement their transportation. Can you walk folks through the school financial practice and the audit procedures and where those documents are available for public view. Yes, absolutely. So every school district in the state is required to submit audited financials to the state of Alaska, to DEED, by November 15th of each year. We are required by the Alaska Chart of Accounts which is actually a statutory requirement to account for our budgets and our spending in a very specific way that kind of segments areas of spending according to what the purpose is.

So we're required to report on what's going to the classroom and regular instruction. We're required to report separately on what goes to special education and special education support services. As opposed to student support services, district administration, operations and maintenance, and student activities. So our financial reporting system are built that way. All of our budgets are built that way.

And then we receive annual audits on those financial statements and then report those to the state. DEED makes— compiles all of that information and has a lot of expenditure and budget data provided on their website. Under the school finance section. And so, um, a lot of that information is publicly available through DEED. However, a lot of districts also provide that information on their websites for the individual budget documents and, um, financial reporting.

Um, additionally, DEED has some other information related to student population. They have a data dashboard that contains some information about, uh, per pupil expenditures. Per district that you can even drill down into the school level. So there's a lot of information that's publicly available in terms of where the money's going. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Parrott. And for folks' edification, our task force hearing on school accountability had Ms. Parrott also providing this information at that particular hearing. It is very onerous, I believe, on districts, the amount of accountability measures and metrics that the state requires, uh, and I highly encourage folks to go check out the DEED website and the report cards on our schools, uh, and also reach out to their school boards as all this information is publicly available. Yes, thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Parrott. We're going to now move to Amanda Wraith, who is here with us in the room. I hope I pronounced that last name correctly. If I did not, please correct me. Uh, please join us here at the dais and identify yourself for the record and begin your testimony when you are ready.

Thank you, Chair Tobin. My name is Amanda Wraith, and you got it right. Thank you for the opportunity that you have opened up across the state for, for public to be involved in this process. And thank you for the work that you guys have done. It's important.

It's very important work, and we appreciate the time and then the willingness to listen to us. I don't have any credentials or anything. I am a mom. That has 3 students who graduated successfully, and they have utilized many aspects of public education. I've had students in charter schools, in traditional brick-and-mortar schools, and in correspondence programs in district and out of district.

And I needed— I only had 3 kids, but they were very different, and I needed all those tools. To be able to give them the success that they needed. But our family also lives in two worlds. My husband works in rural western Alaska in public safety, and he's often involved in the community in many aspects with families, with schools, with— and so the needs that you guys acknowledge and the difference in what's offered in the different parts parts of the state, we live those differences and we understand those and we appreciate that. My main reason for driving in today is the concern over this paragraph on page 9 about correspondence, incorporating public correspondence programs into a broader brick-and-mortar framework, and also the language that talks about correspondence programs not following state standards, which is the law, and they are doing that.

If they aren't doing that, the law says they are supposed to be doing that. And my experience was both in and out of district correspondence, the state standards were followed and they were checked regularly by my overseeing teachers. So I'm concerned that that you have identified real needs, serious needs all across the state. And then you have identified something that's working fabulously. And I don't want to see that messed with.

I want my grandkids to have the same freedom of choice and opportunity that my own children had. So I'm just asking, please understand that Parents care about their kids' education, and they ultimately are the authority in their kids' education, and they want the best for their kids too. And I know you do too. And I just, I just want to ask you to leave correspondence programs alone. They're working, and we appreciate that, and we appreciate your work.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Wraith. Seeing as there's no other people here in the room who wish to testify, We will now move back online where we are joined by Sagaluk Hensley. I apologize if I mispronounced your name.

Please correct me. From Kotzebue, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your testimony when you are ready. Yep. Good morning. This is Sagaluk Hensley calling in from the Kotzebue Airport heading to Anchorage for some orthodontic appointments for my kids.

Thanks for taking testimony. Thanks for this report. I thought it was just very concise and well done. I really appreciated the aspects about school funding that you all looked at and recommended. Those sound awesome.

I really appreciated the fact that you pulled from existing resources and studies that were already conducted, so you were not reinventing the wheel about Some areas I wanted to see more were in the Alaska Native languages. And I saw that world languages were referenced, but nowhere were Alaska Native languages referenced. And those are extremely important. And they are also official languages of the state of Alaska. And our kids are entitled to them.

As a matter of, you know, their fundamental human rights. And I think that languages are so important and so endangered that they deserve a specific shout-out in your report. And I appreciated that you referenced tribes, at least in one section, and you referenced culture being important. I heard somebody earlier reference Changing the term away from adequate education to something else, I would support that because it sounds like we're kind of just trying to like not have a very high bar, but I think we do want a high bar. And I think within that belongs culture and cultural education, place-based education, environmentally-based education.

I think our kids need that as a part of their education because they need to know how to survive and thrive in the world around them. And that includes being on the land and water in rural Alaska. So, I think— and when those— when that's not part of their education, you have to find time and resources outside of the school system to educate them in those ways, which really means that a lot of kids aren't getting that education, or they— it's really hard to find the time to do that and the resources. So I'd really ask that you enhance the section about cultural education and what that means within adequate or, you know, awesome education. And then finally, on— I think it was page 9, you guys referenced needing to figure out the staffing situation and that you support the legislative and regulatory reforms identified by educators in the 2023 Alaska Teacher Retention and Recruitment Survey.

That small few sentences feels so important because staffing in our rural schools is so extraordinarily difficult. And it affects every year. Like, we don't know who's going to be here, who the principal is going to be, etc. And so I would just ask and encourage you to really flesh out that section on page 9 so it's clear what you mean and what the plan is. I tried— I looked up that survey, and I wasn't really— it just seemed really vague.

Like, I don't know what the top issues identified by educators in that survey were. Is it the top 2, top 3, top 5? And I saw there was like some— there were different documents connected to it too. So I really didn't know. It wasn't enough information for me to understand what you were recommending.

And it feels like such a critical element to this study that I just suggest providing more clarity. Yeah. Other than that, just This is really well done, and thank you so much for focusing on this, and really hope that some of these changes are implemented soon, and then, you know, midterm, long term. Our kids really deserve it. So thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Hansley. I do just want to note one component, as I understand that this is a list of recommendations. We do have a larger report that does provide more citations and recognition of where the task force came with these, these particular short, mid, and long-term recommendations.

And I apologize to the public that that larger document is not available yet for public consumption. We're still working to ensure that we have all the right references. I do want to note that in that first bullet point where we talk about meeting and exceeding state standards, Each one of the, the items that is listed in there that is capitalized is actually an adopted state standard by our State Board of Education. One of those adopted state standards is world languages. An additional state standard that has been adopted by our State Board of Education is Alaska Standards for Culturally Responsive Schools, which includes indigenous language learning and indigenous language programming in our schools, along with curricula that is Tied to an Indigenous worldview.

It is about a 14-page document. It's available at the Alaska Native Knowledge Network for folks who might want to review that particular document. It was written in 1998 by a group of stakeholders including the Alaska Federation of Natives, the First Alaskans Institute, the State Board of Education, along with Indigenous language experts. We recognize that not listing each one of those standards in this document might not provide enough enough clarity to, to stakeholders. Additionally, I also want to note on page 10, uh, the second paragraph, if you can so call the sentence a paragraph, which I don't think my English teacher would allow me to do so, we do talk about the expansion of place, community, and culture-based education and recommend dedicated funding to those mechanisms.

The eventual report that will be released to the public and open for public comment has a full section on place and community-based education that we believe is absolutely paramount to providing quality education and adequate education to every student. So, Ms. Hensley, I just wanted to let you know that your comments are well received and that we will continue to provide more clarity about what the task force was meaning in those particular sections. Now we will move to Wasilla where we are joined by John Lamont. Mr. Lamont, if I am mispronouncing your name, please correct me and identify yourself for the record and begin your testimony when you are ready.

My name is John Lamont, J-O-H-N L-A-M-O-N-T, from North Slope, Alaska. I really want to give Ms. Hensley a round of applause for bringing all those items up. I basically, you know, I worked I worked at a school district in remote Alaska for many years, and we've done many studies, or the state has spent money, you know, thousands, probably millions of dollars on studying what we need over the last 50 years, you know, since state took over, you know, the school systems from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I'm a product of Wrangel Institute as a young child. I've done the boarding home program as a high school student with no high schools in our village.

And as I aged, we moved over to the road system where I look at budgets where millions of dollars are going into parking lots or swimming pools at schools. And in remote Alaska, it's really difficult if we— you know, I think the number one thing would be to get teachers on a good retirement program, a better starting salary in the state, especially for remote Alaska. We don't— we have— and while talking about remote Alaska, we have to go to the legislature and ask for money on a yearly basis when boroughs and cities have— if it's still— if I've been out of education for a while now, but if it's still the 70/30 rule for just not to say pick on any other village or any other city in Alaska, but say Wasilla, you know, if I wanted a new school, I'd as the borough or as this, yeah, the borough school district, I'd come up with 30% and then the state would just hand me over the other 70% of building that school. In remote Alaska, Alaska, we don't have that capability, as you all are aware. And, you know, years ago I talked with Senator Hoffman regarding capital projects for schools.

We need good school buildings, yes. We need adequate schools with warm, warm, safe, warm, being warm and safety for our children, yes. But we also need a program that helps our young people learn, to use their brain to think. And if we can't do that in— I don't care what school it is, whether it's remote, REAA, or a city school— we need capable teachers to be able to get children to think, not learning— I mean, not like, you know, not thinking for now, but thinking for the future and how best they're going to change the community, the state, the world they're living in. So I guess kind of jumping around a bit, you know, I've had experience in both systems and I really think we need to focus in on our children, on our teachers, providing them adequate funding equitable learning for our children by adequate teachers and not utilize, you know, a group of— say a group of teachers have been teaching in a remote village, you know, our retention, as you heard Miss Hensley, our retention is horrible.

But having a— once some— I'm an educator, And I don't like talking about programs, but once I spend my 5 years in the village and I'm vetted or, you know, the union really will hold me there whether I become adequate or not. Complacency is really a problem. So we, as administrators, I think schools or education systems really need to look at the way teachers become tenured in each of the different schools, especially in remote Alaska. I know it's very— we're happy when we get teachers tenured and they're there a while and they're there 20 years, but there needs to be a better system to evaluate those teachers so to make sure our children are getting a good education. Education and their understanding, understanding what they're learning so they can utilize it in the future.

There's some programs like, for example, in Lower Yukon School District, they have the Kuzubak Career Academy in Anchorage in collaboration. I believe it was Mr. Gene Stone who, working with Mat-Su Borough, they collaborated in Anchorage School District. I believe her name as Ms. Bishop and being able to develop a program where you can bring some kids in to get an adequate education, get the feel for future careers, get the feel for what it's like to have challenges. I'm not saying we don't have challenges in the remote schools, but bringing them in, making them aware of what's available for them, whether it's whether it's college, whether it's, you know, going, you know, retaining where they're at and going to go back home and get on the council and become a council member. Senator Hoffman, you have 5 minutes.

If you could please wrap up your comments.

Okay. But language is very important. I'm glad Ms. Hensley brought that up. Language and culture and traditions need to be part of a structured curriculum in every school in Alaska. Thank you, ma'am.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lamont. We will now move to Wasilla where we have Kathleen Yerbich. After this testifier, we're going to take about a 10-minute recess. We're going to take about a 10-minute recess before we reconvene, and if we have additional testifiers who are online online and here in the room.

We will begin at about 11:05, uh, re— restarting our public testimony process. Uh, Miss Yerbich, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your testimony when you are ready.

My name is Kathleen Yerbich. I'm a teacher at American Charter in Wasilla. I teach in a multi-age classroom with students in grades 2nd through 5th. Here are a few suggestions to move education forward in Alaska. The Mat-Su School District has a plethora of choices for parents from charter schools, homeschool, neighborhood schools, and much more.

This is a great aspect of our district. Some parents do an admirable job in choosing and guiding their children's learning. Some parents do not. This is the part no one talks about. I see students that come back into the system that have been homeschooled for 2 years to several years, and they are significantly behind.

When a 5th grader does not know their multiplication facts and their reading is 2 grade levels below, and they also struggle to correctly write a paragraph, it is going to be very difficult for them to move on to middle school, but they will. And then they are typically lost and either will scramble to get caught up or give up. What happened during the years of homeschooling? Some parents readily admit that the job was harder than they anticipated. Their kid didn't want to do the assignments.

They were too busy with sports to do all that was required, and so on. We are placing the parents' right to choose above educating our children. I believe that all children should be tested yearly to see how they are doing. I recommend the MAP exam at the beginning of the school year and at the end of the school year. If a child scores below grade level, the state of Alaska should have a system that helps these children and looks at what is going on with the homeschooling piece.

All kids deserve an excellent education. They deserve a chance to learn to the best of their abilities and to be challenged to the next level. The elementary years go by quickly. It is unfair to children for the state of Alaska not to be diligent in making sure they are learning. My second suggestion would be to implement a teacher's retirement pension.

I am tier 3. I will most likely never be able to retire unless the system changes. House Bill 78 was a solid, fiscally responsible bill. It is unfair to ask teachers, firefighters, and police officers to work for their community, and then the system says, "Good luck with your 401. Hope you know how to invest wisely." I had a senator tell me once when I spoke on this subject, "The reason I won't be able to retire is because of poor planning on my part." Is it poor planning to choose these career paths?

Last suggestion, a lot of emphasis is placed on recruiting teachers. I believe that is a problem in the remote areas. I know it is. But I also feel like you have to look at teachers that have been in the system for more than 10 years. Give them a solid pension.

Give them excellent healthcare that doesn't cut their pay in half. Give them leadership roles in schools. Access their wisdom. I know most will gladly share a thought or two. Thank you for listening.

Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. We're now going to take a brief at ease and resume public testimony at 11:05. Brief at ease.

And we're back on the record here at the Task Force for Education Funding. We are located in the Anchorage Legislative Information Office, and that's at 1500 West Benson Boulevard. Just so folks have this information, if they are now just tuning in, if you would like to provide public testimony in person, you can do so here at the Anchorage Legislative Information Office. Later today, if you would like to provide public testimony in person and you are located in Juneau, Alaska, you can do so from 3 to 5 PM. They are meeting in the state capitol in the Davis Committee Room.

If you are in the Fairbanks area and would like to provide in-person testimony, you can do so between 1:00 and 3:00 PM, and that's at their Legislative Information Office located at 1292 Saddler Way, Suite 308. And this evening, if you were in the Kenai area and you would like to provide in-person testimony, you can do so at their Legislative Information Office, which is located at 1 45 Main Street Loop, Suite 217. That's again from 5 to 7 PM. We are also taking online and telephonic testimony. For folks who are in the Anchorage area, they may call 907-563-9085.

From Juneau, they can call 907-586-9085. From all other locales, please call this toll-free number. That's 1-844- 5-8-6-9-0-8-5. Additionally, you can send your written testimony into [email protected].

That's [email protected]. As there is no one who has joined us here in person, we'll now move back to the telephones where we are joined by Marsha Brooks from Anchorage. Ms. Brooks, if you can hear me, if you could identify yourself for the record and begin your testimony. For your testimony. You have 5 minutes.

Hi, um, my name is Marsha Brooks, and, um, the things that I wanted to voice are related to how the school system funds special education. I have 2 kids with reading issues reading, specific reading disability and dyslexia. And I found it really hard to work with the school district with implementing 504 plans, IEP evaluations, and I've noticed lots of my kids' classmates who have similar symptoms with their reading and writing, but found the school district doesn't, like, reach out to the parents to say, hey, like, we're noticing these things. I think that your child should get evaluated for an IEP or 504 so they can get evaluated for a potential disability so that they can get the supports in class that they need. I do know that Alaska was rated as needing assistance in implementing the requirements of Part B of IDEA in 2025 and in 2026.

But I've noticed this as an issue for at least the past 7 years. So, I think that money should be spent on getting the school psychologists and reading teachers and aides to help pull out services and tutor the kids that are having issues so that they can meet grade-level standards and not be held back or struggle in school. And even if the school district is not allowed to say that we don't have the money or we don't have the staff to give all the kids kids what they need. They still try to prevent as many kids, um, from getting the help they need. So I think the school district should spend more money on the people and resources to find the students and give them the, um, the tutoring and the accommodations they need instead of waiting for the parents to do it.

Um, and I think that would result in more kids graduating and meeting grade level standards. That's it. Thank you.

Thank you for your testimony. We'll now stay in Anchorage and head to Francis McLaughlin.

Miss McLaughlin, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your testimony when you are ready. You have 5 minutes.

Hi, my name is Francis McLaughlin. Can you hear me okay?

We can.

Oh, thank you so much. My name is Francis McLaughlin.

I live in Anchorage. I'm a parent. I have two daughters in a public school in East Anchorage.

So my daughter's fifth grade elementary school class was scheduled to have 37 kids for this year. Now I chose to move my 5th grader to a different school because that was just too many students for one teacher in 5th grade in elementary school. We were concerned that our daughter and all the other students would not be at grade level at the end of the year. Essentially, they wouldn't learn anything because there were just too many students in one classroom, right? And, you know, that would make the teacher want to quit.

And so that class does not have 37 right now. You know, many of the students left, maybe like 7 of them left that class, where it did, like us. But that's just too many kids. It's overcrowded classroom, right? And the kids are not going to learn.

And it's not the fault of the teacher or the school district or the administration, but really just a a factor of teacher-to-student ratio. It's just too high. So that's a really big problem. I am hopeful that the state will do whatever it can to support teachers and students and school districts by funding them to make ends meet. The Anchorage School District has this huge shortfall of funding to not be able to meet, you know, their needs.

It's an economic issue. There's, you know, all this inflation, costs have gone up, but funding has not gone up. And the local community can't make up the difference. It has to come from the state. So the school district has closed schools, and I know some parents or some people claimed they would save money by closing schools.

Well, they've closed a lot of schools. Schools, and I won't list off all the schools that have been closed, but the school district did close schools, and they, you know, threatened to close middle school or to end middle school sports. Ignite, which my daughter really liked that class, that program has been cut. They're always on the verge of having to cut school nurses, and that's really, really important to the schools I know and the health of the kids. If there's a medical issue at the school, language immersion.

So I'm just very hopeful that, that the state can provide additional funding to public schools because public schools and public education is very, very important to me as a parent. I think it's very, very important to our state, and I think it's an economic issue, and it's just a fact of life that we have inflation and that that funding has not kept up with inflation. So we just— I think it's a very conservative argument. It's a very basic core government service, public education, that like snowplowing or public safety, public education is a core basic necessity that the state needs to provide. And it's the only hope we have for our state.

Thank you very much for hearing my testimony. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. McLaughlin. Seeing as there's no more folks online and no folks in the room, we're going to take a brief at ease until we have some additional testifiers. Again, this opportunity for public testimony will continue till 12:00 PM where we will take a break for lunch and then reconvene to hear public testifiers from the Fairbanks LIO.

Brief at ease.

And we're back on the record here at the Task Force for Education Funding, continuing our public testimony. We have two additional testifiers who have joined us online. It is my intent to take these two remaining testifiers and then recess for a lunch break. We will join back at 1 o'clock where we will reconvene and begin taking in-person testimony. From the Fairbanks Legislative Information Office.

For those who are interested in providing public testimony from Fairbanks, the Fairbanks Legislative Information Office is located at 1292 Saddler Way, Suite 308. You can also call the Fairbanks Legislative Information Office at 907-452-4448. We, uh, just once again, we will be taking these two remaining testifiers and then recessing for lunch and reconvene at 1 o'clock. So with that, we are going to head to Palmer where we are joined by Rebecca Emerson. Miss Emerson, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your testimony.

You have 5 minutes.

Good afternoon. My name is Rebecca Emerson and I'm a parent in Palmer. My youngest son Winston was born with Down syndrome. Some comments on the task force. For the issue of creating a statewide absentee accounting system with reason codes, I request that you make sure you're including a code for when the student— for when the school sends disabled students home due to staffing issues.

This will help expose the informal removals and shortened school days that many of our students with disabilities face. Also regarding the funding reform, I just ask that you do not delay special education funding. Studying the tiered special needs weights is a welcome step, but districts are cutting paraprofessionals and related services right now.

Especially in my district, there is— there has been a lot of cuts for the moderate to high-need students. I feel we're underfunded, and we do need immediate bridge funding alongside the study. I'd be very interested to find out a way that we can make special education funding follow the student to any of the school choices available in our district. Second, for— I would like you to add specific workforce strategies for special education. The draft proposes targeted licensure and grow-your-own pipelines for CTE teachers and bus drivers, yet makes no mention of special education teachers, paraprofessionals, speech-language pathologists, or school psychologists.

These shortages drive, you know, IEP service failures. So, I'd like to see some targeted grow-your-own pipelines for those specialties.

Also, the definition of an adequate education, I'm not sure I'm very clear on that one.

It says that students should have their diverse learning needs met, but that to me doesn't— is not in line with enforceable accountability and federal state standards for our students. And finally, on the open enrollment and specialized transportation. I would say that needs those mandates, any kind of mandates that you do like that needs to come with dedicated funding for service delivery for special needs students. Thank you for your time and commitment to Alaska students. That's all I have.

Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Emerson. We will now hear from Ms. Mazzetti from Eagle River. Ms. Mazzetti, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your testimony. Please correct my pronunciation of your name.

You have 5 minutes.

You are correct in your pronunciation. My name is Jacinta Mazzetti, and I'm a former homeschooler. But I have many friends who used to homeschool and are currently homeschooling, and so I did a little research. This is not going to be thorough, but there's a number of things that caused me to want to make a comment.

One is the second bullet point on page 5, "taught by qualified educators," that— I would like to see that changed to "supported by qualified educators" for two reasons. Because right now, that could intimate that you're suggesting only a certified teacher, certified public school teacher, would be qualified. And as we know, we have many private schools throughout the state that do an excellent job of educating students, and they are not certified public school teachers. So rather than delving into what it means to be a qualified educator, which would potentially alienate private school students and homeschooling parents, it supported by qualified educators, who are provided the time and support for professional development. The rest of that is completely fine.

The first bullet point seems to contradict the fifth bullet point on page 5, exposure to locally adopted curricula. It would intimate to me that that's speaking about top-down decision-making in terms of Who decides what curriculum will best meet a child's needs? I would argue that potentially the parent, in most cases, or perhaps even all cases, is very well aware of what their child needs. Very few parents are surprised at parent-teacher conferences. They know their children.

And they can do, with guidance, they can do an excellent job of selecting appropriate curriculum that helps meet the needs of diverse learners. And I would add that it's not only special ed students that have diverse learning needs, all students. Have curriculum that resonates better with them than others. And so we have a lot of choices, fortunately, because of the, the many, many homeschoolers throughout the nation has made many— they have many, many more choices than they did even 10 years ago in terms of curriculum. I would hate to see us take a backstep and have school boards or, you know, other administrators deciding what's best for every child.

One size does not fit all. So I don't know how you need to reward that, but it's something to take note of if you really are trying to suggest that diverse learning needs to be met, which I agree with, actually. I just don't think— I think those two things contradict each other. Regarding culturally responsive schools, it doesn't really fit in with the first bullet point, but I just would like to suggest that the Commission investigate what the— if you have not already, speak with the different villages and the different tribes. Many of whom have originated these correspondence programs from their villages, and these correspondence programs allow them the financial resources to develop educationally relevant programs for their students as well.

So homeschoolers throughout the state are benefiting, but these tribes and villages are also benefiting from these programs. And if they move to being like, for example, Eagle River, Anchorage School District, if they make a move to having them have to be students, parents, families having to be part of the local school district, it would essentially gut the villages, many of the villages from financial resources, and to me, it kind of almost amounts to colonialism. So that should really be investigated, the impact on these villages and tribes who have their own homeschool programs that many throughout the state partake of. Do I still have time left?

Wrap up your comments.

Okay. The last thing I'm going to say is that it's suggested that correspondence programs allow broad exemptions from statewide content standards. It's in direct opposition to Alaska's statute AS 14-03016 that says parental authority— local school boards are required to adopt policies that recognize the authority of parental objection to testing, and they are allowed to withdraw their child from standard-based assessments and/or any tests required by the state. So I would take a look at that statute and make sure that this— these recommendations are in compliance with a current Alaskan statute. I don't think any correspondence program is drafting broad exemptions.

I believe parent by parent, um, they are deciding to exempt their child. Please wrap up your comments.

That, that is, that is all, all I have to say at this point. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. And just to remind folks, if they have additional comments that they would like to provide to the committee, they can do so by emailing [email protected].

That's That's [email protected]. With that, we are going to take a recess until 1 o'clock and reconvene to hear from in-person testifiers from the Fairbanks Legislative Information Office. We're taking a recess.

And we are back here at the Task Force for Education Funding. We are continuing with our all-day public testimony on the draft recommendations from the task force. For those who would like to review the draft recommendations, they are available on BASIS, that is A-K-L-E-G dot G-O-V. Additionally, there are copies in all of the LIOs where we are taking in-person testimony today. So that means if you are in the Fairbanks area, there are copies of those draft recommendations available for you there in the Fairbanks LIO. They will also be available in Juneau and in Kenai as we continue our public testimony.

For folks who would like to provide public testimony, we are now taking in-person testimony from the Fairbanks Legislative Information Office. The Fairbanks Legislative Information Office is located at 1292 Saddler Way, Suite 308. You can also join us online, and we are available by telephone. The number if you would like to call in to provide your public testimony is once again, if you're calling from Anchorage, please call 907-563-9085. If you are calling from Juneau, please call 907-586-9085.

From all other locales, please call our toll-free number at 1-844-586-9085.

You can also submit public testimony to [email protected]. That's [email protected]. I wanna remind folks that we are setting public testimony at a 5-minute limit. If you have additional public comments, we ask that you submit them to our email address. That is again, [email protected].

All right, with that, we will continue with our public testimony coming from the Fairbanks Legislative Information Office. We have several folks who are there in the room, and once we, uh, complete the individuals who are in person, we will move to online. So we will begin with Barbara Haney. Miss Haney, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your testimony. You have 5 minutes.

Thank you, co-chairs. My name is Barbara Haney. I live in North Pole. I hold a PhD in economics from the University of Notre Dame. I directed UAF Center for Economic Education And I am one of the founders of Alaskans Against Common Core.

I'm here to talk about sentence 9 in the draft report. The draft says on page 9, extensive post-pandemic research shows that most— for most students, in-person learning significantly outperforms online and distance learning, period. It cites no studies. And I'd ask you to delete it. The best pandemic research by Goldhaber and Keene is good work.

It measures what happened when school buildings closed and classroom teachers talked through a screen with no warning or choice. That tells us closing buildings was costly. It tells us nothing about the families who choose a parent-directed correspondence program where such much of the learning isn't online at all, but in person. The research on full-time virtual charter schools is also poor. I don't dispute it, but Alaska correspondence isn't that model either.

One peer-reviewed study of Alaska correspondence students, McCracken and Coulombe, found no significant overall difference from traditional students. Correspondence students scored higher among Alaska Native, low-income, and disabled students. Those are the students that this task force says it is most worried about. You'll hear that correspondence students don't test, and they don't. That's true, and it applies here, too.

You can't claim a significant advantage you can't measure. The parent teaching the child already knows that the child— what the child is doing and what they know. Families who want to opt into a benchmark test can, but if the point of the test is to inform the parents of the student's progress and the parent is the teacher, they don't necessarily need a test. This sentence on page 9 is the only stated basis for folding correspondence programs into brick-and-mortar frameworks. Please remove it.

My full written comments will follow with Citations. Thank you very much for your time and, uh, for your work on this. There are some good things in the report, but there are also some things that are, uh, taken out of context, and that statement on page 9 is decidedly one of them.

Thank you, Miss Haney. Thank you. We will now move to Rebecca Schwanke. I apologize, Rebecca, if I've mispronounced your last name. If you could please correct me on the record when you identify yourself and begin your testimony.

You have 5 minutes.

That is correct, Rebecca. Thank you. I also live in North Pole. I, um, my background is I taught public school in Illinois for 10 years as a 4th grade educator. However, the last 17 years I have been homeschooling my children.

The last 7 of those have been here in Alaska. I have successfully had 3 students graduate and go on to graduate also, 2 of them from UAF. So they have had a robust and adequate education because of the curricula that I have been able to select to best meet my students' needs.

Speaking as a parent educator, I do have some concerns with some of the broad sweeping terms that have been utilized in this report. Things like all students are to gain exposure to state standards, or the school community determines what is necessary for student education. That does not explicitly represent the over 20,000 homeschool students who are either homeschooled or in a correspondence program across Alaska, which by the way is roughly 1 in 5, almost, percentage of the students in Alaska.

You state on page 4 of the task force report that you want all students to be exposed to state content standards and that you want to expand expose, um, all of them to locally adopted curricula. However, homeschoolers expect autonomy on deciding their curricula and autonomy on deciding what standards, especially social agenda standards and history, they choose to apply. Um, additionally, I'm absolutely opposed to tying, um, money to test performance. That is too much high pressure high stakes on both a student and a teacher, whether they're in homeschool or whether they're in a public school. In addition, I do support separating the building maintenance funding from instructional funding.

I think it's terrible that over $535 million worth of, um, maintenance has been deferred for that long, um, and it would be interesting to find out where the task force surmises that all of this additional funding is going to come from, and that is not clarified. In addition, I expect the continued ability as a homeschool and parent educator to opt out of any content standards that I may choose and the ability to opt out of any proficiency assessments as I choose. Um, finally, on page 10 of your report, The task force says that they state the expansion of place, community, and culture-based education, and you recommend that funding even be dedicated to augment such efforts. Well, as a homeschool educator, my place is home, my community is the homeschooling community, and my culture is a proud conservative American. I would like to know how the task force will support me and my community.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. We will now move to Superintendent Miner, who is also joining us for the Fairbanks LIO. For folks who are online and listening in, the Task Force on Education Funding had the opportunity to visit the Fairbanks area and its incredible schools on January 8th, including the public schools and also uh, one of the charter schools, the Effie Cochran Charter School, where we saw some very cool things, uh, with students engaged in place and community-based education. I believe they were skinning a moose, and that was very neat to see an alumni sharing their knowledge with the students at Effie Cochran.

Superintendent Minert, thank you for joining us. If you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your remarks. You have 5 minutes.

Thank you, Co-chair Tobin and members of the task force. I'm Dr. Luke Meinerth, Superintendent of the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District, serving over 11,000 students in 28 schools in interior Alaska. I want to express my strong support for the task force recommendations. I appreciate that you've visited schools and listened to communities throughout Alaska, including Fairbanks, as you noted. Your work offers a meaningful path forward for public education in our state.

We've debated education funding for decades, and I support your recommendation for an adequacy study to determine what it costs to provide Alaskan students with a quality education and the opportunities many of us had growing up. I know many of you share my frustrations that education funding becomes a political football every year while other departmental budgets, including corrections, continue to grow unchecked. Why is investing in our children so difficult? Our children are Alaska's most precious resource, and I can't think of an investment that will pay greater dividends for our state's future. You know, spent years working with our board and staff deciding which opportunities we can no longer afford rather than creating new ones we all want.

We've spent enough— we've spent enough time managing reductions. Now is the time to invest in our students. I support your recommendation to account for inflation in the BSA and encourage an additional $250 $54.6 million statewide to restore purchasing power lost since 2017. I also support 3-year enrollment averaging, accurate fiscal notes, and your facility recommendations. Fairbanks School District alone has over $435 million in deferred maintenance that shouldn't compete with classroom funding.

I appreciate your recommendations on transportation, charter school indirect costs, health insurance, and reading proficiency. Mississippi's reading improvements required investments. If we want results like Mississippi, we need to invest like Mississippi. Your attention to educator retention is also important. Alaska's Teacher Retention and Recruitment Working Group identified compensation, working conditions, retirement, and healthcare among educators' highest priorities.

Defined benefit retirement ranked third among those proposed solutions. My defined benefit pension has been a significant reason why significant reason why I've stayed in Alaska. We need to give new educators that same opportunity. As I look at these recommendations, I keep coming back to the people doing the work. Educational researchers Michael Fullan and Andy Hargraves said, "Successful and sustainable change can never be done to or even for teachers.

It can only be accomplished by and with them." Between this task force— between this Task Force work and the governor's election, I feel a sense of hope for public education that I haven't felt in quite some time. This feels like a pivotal moment for Alaska. You've listened to Alaskans and identified a path forward. Now we need the legislature to turn these recommendations into action with clear priorities and funding commitments. We've spent decades debating what we can afford to provide our students.

I hope this is the moment we begin focusing on what we want for their future and make the investments necessary to get there. Thank you for your service to Alaska and your continued support of public education. Thank you. Thank you, Superintendent Minert. Uh, just so folks know, as I've had a, a request to remind, uh, folks who are following us online and who are there in the Fairbanks LIO about who is online from the task force participating in today's public testimony, uh, I am joined by Representative, uh, my co-chair Rebecca Himschoot, who is online and watching along and listening to testifiers.

We also have Representative Story, Representative Ruffridge, Senator Kiehl, and myself who are all here listening to your public testimony today. I understand that some folks are just joining us and I want to make sure that they know that we are all here listening to your feedback on these draft recommendations. With that, we will stay at the Fairbanks LAO. We are now joined Ellis Ott from the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District. Uh, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your testimony.

You have 5 minutes.

Yes, thank you, uh, legislators and Task Force on Education Funding. My name is Ellis Ott. I live in Fairbanks. I am the senior research analyst for the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District and the Alaska State Chair for the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools.

I support the task force recommendations for education funding and urge the removal of Alaska's impact aid deduction. Alaska is the only state in the nation still supplanting these federal dollars, a practice directly undermining Congress's intent to compensate school districts for tax-exempt federal property, including Indian lands. 60% Of the state of Alaska is federal land. Comprising 26% of all federal land in the United States. In FY26, Alaska received about $121 million in federal impact aid.

However, my research indicates Alaska is being shortchanged by up to $70 million annually, meaning our districts should receive closer to $190 million. Nearly half of our districts should qualify for heavily impacted status. That they are locked out because the U.S. Department of Education misapplies Lower 48 municipal rules to Alaska. One heavily impacted status requirement is meeting a local property tax rate threshold. None of our regional education attendance areas meet that rule because they have no tax authority.

Currently, Annette Island School District is the sole exception, qualifying automatically through federal statute. Furthermore, for over a decade, the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development has not submitted a generally comparable district analysis to the federal government. Because only DEED can submit this analysis, Alaska districts are blocked from special impact aid provisions such as heavily impacted status and a rate adjustment due to geographic cost factors. My inquiries on these matters to DEED and the federal impact aid have yet to be fully answered. Whenever Alaska fails the disparity test, the state mounts a major legal effort to defend its right to deduct $70 to $90 million a year from local schools.

Yet when our districts are denied or miss qualifying properties, are locked out of heavily impacted status, or are blocked by missing state reports, the state of Alaska is silent. Despite the increase to state aid in— obligations. I am writing a white paper detailing these issues to share with our state. In the meantime, I request that the legislature review the generally comparable district analysis issue, partner with our congressional delegation to press the U.S. Department of Education, and dedicate state support to help districts secure the federal funds we are owed rather than only defending the state's impact aid deduction. Thanks.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Ott. If you could please provide that testimony in written form, there were several things that you noted that we want to ensure that we capture. Thank you. Will do.

With that, we will stay at the Fairbanks LIO where we are joined by Gail McBride. Miss McBride, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your testimony. You have 5 minutes.

My name is Gail McBride and I am a homeschool mom, uh, years ago, grandmother, great-grandmother, and currently I'm with Moms for Liberty. So I have mostly my concerns here are for parental rights, but I have a couple of them points to make on page 4, the statement is made that the loss of public trust in our education system due to systemic underfunding.

I would take exception with that. I am well aware of the loss of trust in the public education system, have been for many, many, actually many decades, and it is not due to loss of funding. But mostly my concern is, um, the parents have the right to educate their children how they see fit, and so I am opposed to several things here. One of them is more funding for the school system every year. We need— we hear that.

But I am interested in accountability, and I'm encouraged about the READS Act bringing up some of the reading scores, but it's simply an indication that it wasn't adequate before. That is an acceptable. The schools in Alaska should be teaching children how to read, how to do math, and it doesn't take a ton of money to do that. I understand there's a lot of other things that I can't address, but, um, there's a lot of models have been around for many, many years for successful educating children. Across the country, in fact around the world.

And it's unacceptable to me that we are not utilizing what is successful. And we continue to say that we are unsuccessful because we don't have enough funding.

Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony.

We will now hear from Jackie Goss. Jackie, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your testimony. You have 5 minutes.

Hi, I'm Jackie Goss. This is my 4th year homeschooling with Raven. Um, I read through I was reading through the task force proposal and I saw that the statute 14 said the purpose of education was so that kids can succeed in education and work, so they can shape worthwhile and satisfying lives for themselves, so they can exemplify best values of society and improve the quality of the world around them. And I thought that was a good definition.

I thought that was great. I think that homeschooling fits this goal at a low cost, and I think that homeschooling helps create a diversity of skills within our citizens. And I would— I don't think we should try to shape homeschool to the brick-and-mortar model.

For us personally, I'd rather my kids not know a little bit about 15 subjects but rather, I'd rather them be a master of 2 or 3. And as I teach them every single year after year, I can see their talents and their strengths, and I can try to develop those. And the nice thing is, is we can incorporate our lessons into the rest of our day, into our reading time and our other tasks. I can pass on my knowledge and skills that I have from working.

When they surpass my knowledge, I can hire a tutor or get them in an apprenticeship. And also we like the healthy lifestyle.

My kids get 10 hours of sleep every night and we eat home-cooked meals and we can work with the weather to get exercise and sun. And also I don't think we should burden the families or the taxpayers with extra accounting for homeschooling. We don't do it for the money, obviously, because I left a job for this. And I think the extra accounting would cost the state more than it's worth. And the existing reporting that I have to do for homeschooling I think is enough of a burden already for the small allotment we get.

So in conclusion, we don't— you know, my husband and I, we don't know if homeschooling is going to work until my kids are older. But, and there's no test to see, oh, are they improving the quality of the world or are they leading satisfying lives? But just because there's no test, it doesn't mean that those aren't good goals. And I think that homeschooling is an experiment, especially with more people doing it. I mean, it's been going on, but more people is an experiment.

But I think it's an experiment we should take because it's low cost and it's low risk to the state. And I think the state should Trust the homeschooling families because we're capable people and we care about our kids and we care about our community. And I just wanted my kids real quick to just tell about their homeschool.

Hi, I'm Nico Dementis and I'm 10 and in 5th grade. I'm here because I want homeschool to stay the way it is because it's working out great.

The subjects I have are math, language arts, science, foreign languages, PE, and I also do lots of life skills. The life skills I like a lot are raising chickens, making hot sauce, doing statistics, gardening, helping my dad with construction, and hunting and processing the animals I kill. I shot my first moose in September.

My name is Melina Cementis, and I'm in 3rd grade. I like learning piano, and I really like cooking and baking.

My school subjects are science, math, PE, foreign languages, language arts, and music. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony, Miss Goss. If you could please ensure that the, the names of the two other testifiers are given to the Anchorage— or excuse me, to the Fairbanks LIO.

We want to ensure that their remarks are attributed to the correct person. We will now go to Josh Church, who is joining us from the Fairbanks LIO. Mr. Church, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your testimony. You have 5 minutes.

Yes, my name is Joshua Church. I'm a Fairbanks resident. I was homeschooled, and I'm homeschooling my children now. I appreciate the thought that some of the legislature is putting into fixing the problem that we all know exists in public schooling. Over the last 50 years, government-run schools in the United States have declined substantially relative to the rest of the world in performance.

Alaska's public schools have declined significantly more, going from in the better portion of the country to almost the worst in the country. So while I appreciate you all taking the time to look at this, we need to make sure we are looking at it through the right lens and we are actually focusing on the problems, not ignoring the problems and focusing on side issues.

One of the things we should be asking is why is there a shortfall in funding? And what we see consistently is because the allocation formula funds based on the number of students, every year the legislature increases the amount of funding, yet Well, we do that year over year. The schools are running less money. Why is that? Because the school's performance is so subpar that more and more students are being pulled out for alternative learning methods that produce better results.

Homeschooling is one of the bright spots, along with charter schools, in Alaska's education system. Education system. Harvard has identified that the homeschooling community and the charter schools are the best in the country in Alaska. And yet our main public education system is amongst the worst in the country. So while I appreciate the thoughtful work to look at how do we look at more stability and financing potentially inflation-proofing, potentially doing a rolling average of funding so there's more predictability, getting the legislature to pass a budget earlier in session.

Those things are worthwhile to look at, but anything that starts to put additional restrictions on the areas of our schooling system that are actually working and does not address the root problem, which is the majority of the public school systems are not, uh, performing to standard. And so we need to look at not how do we protect the education system in the state, but how do we produce the best results for the kids of this state. So the answer to this is not always more money, more money. Alaska spends more than almost any other place in the country. So our issue is not simply adding inflation-proofing or diversifying the capital budget from the operating budget.

While those may be worth looking at, we need to start looking at why is it that homeschooling and charter schools are able to be so much more effective? Why is it that states— lower 48 states— their brick-and-mortar schools are able to be more effective? Rather than simply a conversation about funding. I think if the legislature will take this seriously and will start to increase the standards and requirements, not on the homeschoolers and the charter schools that are succeeding, but rather on the failing institutions that we have, and start to put pressure on the school boards, and the school administrators, then we will start to see some long-term change. The solution for more money, additional pensions, whatever it might be— we've been chasing that rabbit for years and years, and more money does not solve a problem if you don't get to the underlying causes.

Thank you for your time, and I hope you will sincerely look at this rather than just view it through a political lens. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Church. We will now hear from the Vice President of Tana Chiefs Conference.

We are joined by Chief Rhonda Pitka. Chief Pitka, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your testimony. You have 5 minutes. Good afternoon. My name is Rhonda Pitka.

I am Vice President of the Tanana Chiefs Conference. I'm also the Chief of the Village of Beaver. I live in the Village of Beaver still. I'm a former school board member for the Yukon Flats REAA. I had to unfortunately resign my position when I was elected as Vice President of Tanana Chiefs Conference.

That was a very hard decision for me politically. Public school in rural Alaska has been a cornerstone of my career, and I highly support public education in this state. Thank you. Um, Kenai Native Chiefs Conference regularly lists public school funding at the top of our annual legislative priority list. Our full board of directors unanimously passed a resolution in support of a permanent statutory increase to the base student allocation that accounts for inflation.

We believe that schools are the heart of our communities. Our people gather and use the schools to house essential workers in the summer season. A lot of larger communities that have more infrastructure don't have the challenges that we face in rural Alaska with lack of adequate buildings for state services. So firefighters use our schools in the summertime when they're in rural Alaska fighting fires. We have contractors who come in to do essential work that we house in our schools also.

These schools, I cannot understate the importance of these schools to each of our communities. I live in a village that frequently has been on the list of closing down because of low enrollment.

The consequences of insufficient BSA funding include reduced support staff and teaching staff for our communities. We have difficulty providing higher-level coursework in some of our smaller communities because of the lack of educators. We have reduced teacher training times and professional development in all of our school districts, and an increase in international J-1 visas due to the inability to recruit and retain Alaskan teachers.

The J-1 visas affect our small schools especially because we have difficulty recruiting teachers that are adventurous enough to come to rural Alaska. And live in 40 below for 120 days straight.

We had an amazing educator who is currently still in the Philippines because he could not get his J-1 visa to come back to our school in Chalkeetsek. We definitely miss him and the children miss him also.

The significant increases in our class size in our already small schools have caused a burden on our, um, on our, on our community and our community's ability to educate our children. We have too many, too many students in too small of classes because of the inability to increase the BSA. We have difficulty covering the rising costs of energy, insurance, and other fixed costs. Those costs don't go down because the funding stays the same. They've increased to roughly 70% of our school's budget is related to maintenance.

Overcrowded kindergarten classrooms with high needs. This is tough to have a classroom full of young learners with limited space. Support and lack of teacher aides.

We face, uh, difficulty hiring and retaining teachers in our areas, especially our special education aides, because of the low wages and the benefit issues with the state. Um, it's hard to attract and retain qualified staff, uh, due to non-competitive wages, especially for our special education aides, because they require require additional training, and the training costs money. When we can't provide the basic professional development that these, these aides need, it causes us a serious backlog of IEPs that don't ever get cleared out because we just don't have enough staff to do the work.

We frequently face a loss of maintenance employees. Because of these wages and the benefit problems that I mentioned earlier. Losing maintenance staff in a small community of 500 people is different, but when you live in a community of 55 people and the wages are very low— I'm sorry, there's a very weird background noise going on. I'm not sure what that is. But the wages are so low that we lose these important staff members to different projects in our communities.

This is a critical issue, and it affects the safety and usability of school facilities. Our long-term deferred maintenance issues have become so critical that we frequently— we score high on the CIP list, but the lack of funding throughout the years to address our deferred maintenance has caused severe issues trying to get the work done in a timely manner so that our schools remain usable and complete. Ms. Pitka, you were at the 5-minute mark. If you could wrap up your comments and please submit the entirety of your comments to the task force at our email address or there at the LIO, and we'll be able to review them. But I do apologize, asking if you could wrap up your comments.

Yes, thank you. I will. We support and we take the position that we welcome tribal compact schools and urge the legislature and new governor to consider making the pilot programs permanent. And we do support that, but with one caveat. We, um, we don't want any funding to be taken away from public schools.

To address the State Tribal Education Compact. Thank you so much for your time and your ability to be generous with me today. I appreciate it. Have a good day. Thank you.

You as well. And remember, folks, if you have additional comments, please submit them to us via email. The email address is [email protected].

We will now hear from Charlie Wright, also with the Tanana Chiefs Conference. Mr. Wright, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your remarks. You have 5 minutes.

Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Charlie Wright. I'm the Secretary-Chairman of the Executive Council for Tanana Chiefs Conference. My home community is Rampart.

While I know that the task force is specifically seeking feedback on education adequacy, enrollment, energy costs, school operations, I also want to shine a spotlight on inadequate school meal programs. Access to reliable school nutrition services is directly connected to educational adequacy, student attendance, academic performance, and the unique operating costs faced by rural Alaska districts. TCC can credibly argue that a definition of adequate education must include the ability of districts to consistently provide meals to students, particularly in remote communities where schools are often a critical source of daily nutrition. As the task force considers what educational adequacy means, we encourage you to recognize that student nutrition is a fundamental component of a student's ability to learn. TCC has received reports that some school districts and schools in our region are Facing significant challenges sustaining school meal service due to rising food costs, shipping expenses, and ongoing difficulties receiving supplies in remote communities.

When schools are unable to consistently provide breakfast or lunch programs, the impact extends beyond food service. Hungry students are less able to concentrate, participate in class, and achieve academically. In many rural communities, school meals are among the most reliable sources of nutritious food available to children during the school day. We encourage the task force and legislature to consider whether Alaska's definition of educational adequacy should account for the unique costs of providing essential student services in remote communities, including, including school nutrition programs. Funding formulas that fail to account for freight costs, supply chain disruptions, and rural operating Expenses place students in remote Alaska at a disadvantage through no fault of their own.

We also encourage further examination of how state funding mechanisms can support districts experiencing extraordinary food and shipping costs so that students do not lose access to meals because of circumstances beyond local control. Every student deserves both an education and the basic nutritional support necessary to benefit from that education. We appreciate the opportunity to share these concerns and thank the task force for its consideration. And since I have a little bit more time, I'd like to also add that we have a lot— hard time maintaining our schools out there and keeping them warm due to the fact that a lot of them are getting old and they're not kept up. We're burning a lot of fuel that costs a lot to get to the communities.

Thank you very much for your time today and your consideration. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wright. We will now hear from Grant Guy, who is with the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District. Mr.

Guy, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your remarks. You have 5 minutes.

Thank you, members of the task force. My name is Grant Guy. I have been a principal in the state of Alaska for the past 20 years. I have worked in a K-12 school in Yup'ik Eskimo village of Marshall, Alaska. Here in Fairbanks, I've worked at both the elementary and secondary levels.

I'm currently the principal at Wood River Elementary and have also served as the principal at North Pole High School. Education has changed immensely over the past 3 decades. We have seen technology change the face of our society and our schools. With these changes, our schools have been constantly adapting to keep up with the changes needed to support our students. Students.

I appreciate that the state is recognizing that our laws also need to adapt to meet the needs of our schools, our students, and our communities. I support stable and predictable funding. Many times during my tenure here in Fairbanks, I have had to deliver letters to tenured and non-tenured teachers alike letting them know that due to our budget, we would not be able to retain their services. Often this was caused by a lack of information about funding Districts have to follow timelines about letting teachers know if they will have a job before state-approved annual funding takes place. This has led to several teachers that I have known who have left our district and even our state to find secure positions in other places.

Since joining the Fairbanks School District, we have closed multiple schools, removed tutors, cut custodians, many of our maintenance staff, and passed on huge increases in the cost of healthcare to employees. The increases have not kept pace with inflation, and when paired with healthcare increases, this has led to some decreases in the actual pay of our educators, especially our paraprofessionals.

I'd like to thank you for recognizing how rising costs of everything impact school budgets. When I was in Marshall many years ago, the cost of a gallon of gas was $8. It's much more now. I can't imagine how they are heating their fuel— heating schools there. I support facility and operational improvements.

Many of the buildings have large deferred maintenance needs, as you've heard from many of the speakers today. When I was the principal at North Pole High School, we regularly had one of our two boilers in need of maintenance. This would lead to a cold building, with our entry and commons area regularly being under 50 degrees during our cold snaps that we experience here regularly in Fairbanks. With the cuts to our custodian staff, which is now operated through a third party, we often come to buildings that have not been completely cleaned. With the huge cuts to our maintenance department's work orders to repair things take much longer.

Last year we waited 6 months to get a projector installed into a classroom. I'm in favor of supporting the diverse needs of our students.

Wood River currently houses 3 district-wide ER special education programs for students with severe emotional dysregulation. These programs are typically supported at a 1 adult to every 3 student ratio. The burnout rate of these positions is extremely high. My most senior aide or paraprofessional has 2 years of experience. The amount of time, energy, and cost to train those individuals are immense and oftentimes By the time they start learning what they need to do to help students de-escalate from situations, they are so burnt out that they go and find positions that pay them more for much less stress.

I support any investment in staff and in learning quality. Alaska is experiencing a massive teacher shortage. In the first 7 years I worked here in Fairbanks, I had a large pool of local teachers who applied for positions. Last year, I filled 3 positions without having a single applicant from the United States. We also lack substitutes in schools.

It is common for us here in Fairbanks to have about a 50% fill rate for absent teachers and aides. Today I have 8 absences and I only have 3 subs. This leads to constant shifting of staff and people often taking on multiple jobs each and every day. I have lost several employees who have expressed that they never feel they have enough time to do their job because they're always filling in for people who are gone. And we cannot find the subs to fill those positions.

A part of that is because our pay, as several of the people have mentioned, has not kept up with inflation. I do want to thank the task force for your recommendations. You have hit on a lot of the problems that public education and education in general of our state is dealing with. I appreciate the proposing of real solutions to a lot of these problems. Thank you so much for your time and for your energy and for the work that you do for public schools and our communities.

Thank you. Thank you, Principal Guy. And I want to extend my thanks to your students who joined us in the student roundtable during our site visit on January 8th. I had the pleasure of listening to several of your students, and they are just young spitfires, and I cannot wait for them to be our future leaders. We will now hear from Caitlin Connors.

Miss Connors, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your remarks. You have 5 minutes.

Thank you.

Yeah, my name is Caitlin Connors, and I am a credentialed teacher and also a mom. I have had many times in my life where I have uttered the phrase that education needs more funding. That is what will fix our problems. And while there are certainly some things that do need funding.

I don't think that more money than what has already been allocated is necessarily the answer. I think one of the issues that was discussed in the analysis was that there are declining enrollments, and there is also a quote that says, across the street we have witnessed schools here being forced to cut programs teachers had to cut programs, teachers choosing to leave their communities and careers, and a loss of public trust in the education system due to systematic underfunding. I would be curious to know what evidence there is that the underfunding is what is contributing to those problems. I looked up what is the number one contributor to declining enrollment in Fairbanks, and it is families moving away. Um, and I think we need to consider then what would cause there to be less families to move away.

So it's very expensive to live here, um, and there's maintenance, teachers, utilities, other rising expenses. And if we increase tax costs as well, I am concerned that that will actually hinder the goal of increasing enrollment and funding. So, I think that that is something that I'm hoping the task force will be able to consider. I also think that there should be alternative educational options evaluated and how those could also potentially help with the budget issue. Are there alternative learning options that would help solve our problems, such as homeschooling?

There is reference to COVID and online learning and that not being effective for students, but I would be curious to hear from the task force what information there is on homeschooling specifically, which is different than just online learning. If there is an increase in homeschool, which seems to be the direction that most families in Fair— not most families, but lots of families are going in Fairbanks, about 1 out of 5 kids are homeschooled. Why don't we consider that as a potential option for lowering the costs of other things? If we don't have as many brick and mortars, if we don't have as many students in those brick and mortars, that decreases the expenses.

Exponentially, and people are already having to pay for those things at their home. Why not take advantage of that being a potential resource? There's also some reference to Mississippi and some of the improvements that they have had in their state, but I think that the task force needs to consider that we are not Mississippi. We are a very unique state that's very large, and we require unique solutions, and we might need to look at doing things a little bit differently than we have in the past.

And— oh, and then the one other thing I wanted to note, in addition to keeping in mind how homeschooling could actually help solve resolve some of these budgetary issues. I think it's also important to be careful of any unfair bias towards alternative learning options. That was something that I noticed while, um, reading the document. And, uh, I would just also urge the task force to, um, use the funds that have already been allocated in the additional millions that we're going to receive this next year wisely. And to avoid any sort of action that would contribute to increased cost to the taxpayer, because that would be counterproductive and could lead to even further decline in enrollment.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. I have currently no additional people in the queue in the Fairbanks LIO for testimony. If there is anyone there in the audience who would like to provide public testimony, I'm going to give you an option to come to the dais now and introduce yourself in to begin your remarks.

Otherwise, we will move to our online testifiers. So is there any additional folks in the Fairbanks LIO that would like to provide testimony?

Where's the mic?

Hey, Senator, how are you? Hello. If you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your remarks. You have 5 minutes.

Oh sure, I won't take that long.

My name is Will Stapp. I'm a representative from East Fairbanks, Fort Wainwright, and Badger, but I'm also a homeschool parent. And first, I wanted to say thank you for taking all the time by yourself down there, Senator, all day to take all this wonderful public testimony on this issue. But I, I did read the document of the task force, and I guess as a parent of a homeschool family, I did want to comment on one special set thing that I think might feel a little scary to folks, and that's kind of this section of the document that you guys put out the other day that talks about one of the recommendations of the task force is to support reforms that effectively would look to push kids out of the correspondence program and incorporate them back in the brick-and-mortar framework. And I know that a lot of the folks in the homeschool community, correspondence community— obviously that's part of the public school system— They've always kind of felt like there was this Machiavellian scheme to put— force their kids back into public schools.

Like, a lot of them don't have their kids in the actual brick-and-mortar school for life circumstances or for ideological circumstances. And I really just don't think putting that in a document is a very helpful way to process this task force going forward. So I hope that as the committee moves forward, and I know that when I get back down in Juneau, I would like to give a lot of parents relief in their concerns that it's really not the objective of folks in the legislature to push their— force their kids back into brick and mortar school. And that's all I have to say. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Representative Stapp, and congratulations on your reelection.

As there is no other folks there who are indicated in the queue to testify in person, please know that we will keep public testimony open in the Fairbanks LIO for the next hour, so you are more than welcome to join at any time and to get yourself in the queue. But for now, we will move to online. We have next up, also in Fairbanks, is David Wright. Mr. Wright, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your testimony. You have 5 minutes.

Hello, my name is David Wright from Fairbanks, Alaska. Is my audio coming through okay?

It is.

Okay, thank you. I'm going to ride the momentum from Mr. Sapp's comments.

Again, I'm David Wright from Fairbanks, Alaska. I'm a retired United States Army major and father of 3 homeschooled children. I do appreciate any effort to improve education for our students, but I do want to register my objection to the task force's wording on that same part of the document Mr. Sapp referenced, page 9. It reads, And I quote, the task force recommends that school districts investigate effective methods for incorporating public correspondence programs into a broader brick-and-mortar framework, acknowledging extensive post-pandemic research indicating that for most students, in-person learning significantly outperforms online and distance learning, end quote. So my 3 kids have benefited from both public education and correspondence program education at different times.

Both were right for them at the time. I feel that freedom of school choice is a huge benefit to Alaskan families and also to service members who are stationed here. I've spoken to countless parents who recognize that Alaska offers something truly unique when it comes to the level of school choice for their children's education, and I implore the task force to guard that. So if that freedom of education choice exposes weaknesses in other education models or institutional priorities or political agendas, then so be it. That's the power of the people.

That's how freedom works. Institutions should not be shielded from competition by restricting the choices of families when it comes to educating their kids. Parents and families do not exist to serve the education system. The education system exists to serve children and families. Any effort to diminish those freedoms and consolidate authority within government is a step away from freedom and a step closer towards government overreach and control.

I urge the task force to protect Alaska's statewide correspondence programs and reject any recommendation that diminishes parental choice. Please do not take away education options that make Alaska exceptional for our families. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for your testimony.

We will now move to Soldotna, where we have the Director of Support Services for Quspuk School District, Mr. Gardner. Mr. Gardner, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your remarks. You have 5 minutes. All right, thank you, task force. Severin Gardner, Director of Support Services for the Cusplex School District.

I do support a lot of the things in the proposal, but I do want to say that regardless of data and the program, there are successes, failures, and room for improvement across from homeschool, charter school, private school, public school. I would like to see a couple things added to the list. One would be to fully fund the READS Act. Right now, preschool kids, 4- and 5-year-olds, are getting half funding, and there's a limit to that funding based that if the funding cap is reached, not all the programs that are approved will have adequate funding.

And I also would like to see added the impact aid offset removed for districts and not have the offset be used as a funding source for education besides the school that it's designated for. That is all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your comments.

We will now head to Petersburg where we have the special education director for the Petersburg School District and the president of the Board of Special Education for the Alaska School Administrators Association, Cynthia Frye. Ms. Frye, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your remarks. You have 5 minutes. Thank you. Uh, co-chair Tobin, co-chair Himschoot, and members of the Legislative Task Force on Education Finance.

As it was stated, my name is Cynthia Frye, and I am the Director of Special Education at Petersburg, the President of our Council of Administrators of Special Education, which is an affiliate with the Alaska Council of School Administrators. So thank you for the opportunity to speak today. Um, as a member of our local school community, I appreciate that the task force is recommending to prioritize sustainable funding for our public schools. To keep our schools strong, safe, and staffed, state funding must be based on current financial climate in our state and communities. In order to do that, we do need to increase that base student funding and adjust it for inflation.

The rising costs of energy, transportation, health insurance are squeezing our budgets and forcing painful cuts to the classroom resources and therefore direct student services. We need to support our special education and paraeducators. As was stated in a previous testimony, that we are losing individuals and can't find individuals to come into these positions. We're seeing a growing need of students with complex low incidents who rely on paraeducators support throughout their educational day. Increasing special education funding is critical so every student gets the support they deserve without hurting classroom learning across the board.

Please continue to address this in your recommendations. We need to offer competitive compensation to keep our staff in Alaska. In order to attract and retain highly qualified special education teachers and support staff, we must increase the salaries and reinstate a defined benefit retirement system. Right now we are directly competing with our neighbor Washington State where the cost of living is lower and salaries and retirement benefits are much more competitive. We're losing a great deal of special education teachers simply because of our comp— our compensation isn't competitive.

We've heard that the buildings and the structures themselves are failing. Our children can't learn and staff can't thrive in deteriorating school buildings. We need dedicated funding to maintain the roofs, the HVAC systems, and safety features so our schools can remain clean, functioning, and secure in even the most remote areas. We must fully fund the state mandates. It was stated earlier that the READS Act— we're seeing vital improvement of student outcomes, but in order to continue this, it has to be funded.

Implementing new curriculum and training costs real money, and it's time-consuming for our staff to make sure we're giving the best service possible for our students. If the state sets this requirement, it needs to provide the funding so districts aren't left holding the bill. Another piece is our early budget information. Thank you for the recommendation for early funding decisions. It's incredibly challenging for our school districts to plan expenses for the upcoming school year when state funding decisions are not made until after our budget proposals are due.

This uncertainty directly impacts our ability to recruit quality teachers, special education teachers, and paraeducators to determine whether teacher layoffs are necessary and establish how we can support our current programs and staff that provide quality education for our students. Our public schools are the heart of our communities and every community. Funding our base operations, offering competitive compensation, and maintaining safe facilities Fully funding reading programs and closing the special education gap aren't optional. They are essential investments in our children and our current and future workforce. Thank you for your time, leadership, and support of all of our students.

And I'm happy to answer any questions if you have them. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Fry. I deeply appreciate your comments, and I don't see any questions from task force members at this time. But we know your information and your contact, and we will get a hold if we have additional inquiries.

We will now head back to Fairbanks, where we will be joined by the president of the Fairbanks Education Association, Ms. Peterson. Ms. Peterson, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your remarks. You have 5 minutes. Good afternoon, Senators and Representatives. Thank you for the opportunity to provide public comment this afternoon.

I am Danette Peterson, the president of the Fairbanks Education Association, representing 670 certified educators in the interior. Our association represents certified educators in our district's correspondence program, charter schools, schools of choice, and neighborhood schools, which are all part of our public school system. I will mention on a side note that my husband and I are parents of 4 children, and over the years our children have attended our district's charter, correspondence, schools of choice, and neighborhood schools. I support the task force recommendation for funding. One key to success for Alaska's public schools is funding.

That means stable, timely, and predictable funding. Funding that happens early in the session is crucial so financial decisions can be made with full knowledge. Our budget process here in Fairbanks begins in October. Given the job market and labor shortages, receiving funding at the 11th hour doesn't allow districts to hire staff or add programs. Late funding is simply too little too late to be fully realized.

Teacher turnover is intrinsically tied to student success. In Fairbanks, we have hired more than 100 certified teachers this year to fill vacancies. We still have vacancies that remain. We must support our public schools so we can retain qualified teachers for our students rather than spending money to recruit educators year after year. When we support educators, we support students.

One aspect that needs further attention is class size and workloads for our SPED teachers, where we often see the highest vacancy and turnover rates. Our SPED programs are currently propped up by retired rehired teachers, international educators, and substitutes. In Fairbanks, 46 International educators are in our SPED classrooms and filling positions that would otherwise go vacant in supporting our most vulnerable students. The BSA must be adjusted to reflect the realities of increasing costs such as skyrocketing energy, transportation, and health costs. Those expenses exceed those borne by school districts in the lower 48.

Not compare apples and oranges. Not be competitive salary or healthcare to retain teachers. It must be both. Educators and families deserve lower PTR and increased CTE classes, arts and enrichment programs. Reality is that in recent years we have closed 7 schools, cut bus routes, reduced gifted services music programs, supplies for classes.

We are trying very hard in Fairbanks to turn the corner from cutting to investing.

Support for specific funding— sorry, specific funding for facility maintenance and operations is greatly needed. Teacher's workplace is a student's learning environment. Broken boilers and leaky roofs are a reality even in our state's largest districts. Districts should not have to choose between buildings and instructions. Both needs are crucial and must be met.

Schools are the heart of our communities. Our educators connect generations. Thank you for supporting our educators and our students who are our future doctors, accountants, business owners, and elected leaders. Thank you for your work, dedication, and for seeking solutions to the myriad of problems facing our public schools and seeing the potential in our students. Thank you.

Thank you, President Peterson. Uh, we will now head back to the Fairbanks LIO where we have Sydney Mullen. Uh, Miss Mullen, if you could please join us on the dais and identify yourself. Once you are ready, you may begin and you have 5 minutes.

Okay, thank you. Can you hear me? We can. Okay, great, thank you.

Um, yeah, so my name is Sydney Mullen and I am a parent, um, in residence here in Fairbanks, and I have 3 kids, 2 of whom are enrolled in elementary school here in the district.

And I just want to first say that I really appreciate all of your hard work in and basically just trying to improve the educational outcomes and the educational resources of Alaska schools. I really, really appreciate it, and I'm excited about what the future holds for Alaska. I read through the Education Task Force's proposed recommendations, and I was excited to see so many wonderful recommendations to improve Alaska's schools and make really great, headway for Alaska students. In particular, I'm hoping that the state can inflation-proof the base student allocation so that way school funding can keep up or can keep pace with costs. I know in Fairbanks our school board has done so much work to try to make, you know, really tough cuts in the past, and now we are finally starting to invest, as the previous testifier spoke to.

And that's been really great here. We've been able to bring back some really, really great stuff for our students, including, you know, decreasing the people-to-student or people-to-teacher ratio. I also want to— I want the state to address that school maintenance request crisis. It was noted in that the proposed recommendations that there is a $535 million backlog. I remember back in 2025 seeing a ProPublica report.

I believe it was published in August of that year discussing the crisis, and especially in rural communities. And they showcased all these images of basically collapsing buildings, collapsing school buildings, structures that had, you know, roofs that were caving in, water damage, mold, buildings that were not ADA compliant. Among many other things. And I just remember being so horrified about what those students and teachers had to go through in these rural communities and how their maintenance requests were just being ignored for various reasons, or they weren't able to get access to money to help fix these requests. What's notable is that, you know, what could have been a, you know, maybe $500,000 fix has now spiraled into a condemned building or something worse.

So small, you know, drops in the bucket money-wise can help in the long run. So I really hope that we can address that as a state and especially focusing on those rural schools. And other than that, I just want to say thank you all. And I really look forward to seeing what the future holds for this new pro-education government. I'm really excited.

So thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. We will now head back online where we are going to Metlakatla, where we are joined by Mike Nigis, who is the President of Alaska Association of Secondary School Principals. Uh, President Nigis, if you could please identify yourself for the record and begin your remarks.

You have 5 minutes.

Thank you, Co-chair Tobin, Co-chair Himschoot, and members of the Legislative Education Funding Task Force. For the record, my name is Mike Niggus, and I'm the principal at Metlakatla High School in Annette Island School District and the current president of Alaska Association of Secondary School Principals. First, I want to recognize and support the work of the task force and its findings. The work being done to address Alaska's educational challenges is very important.

However, there's a critical piece missing: the recruitment, preparation, mentorship, and retention of school principals and assistant principals. Remember stepping into legislature for the first time. You have tremendous responsibility and a desire to make a difference, but there's a steep learning curve. You need mentorship, guidance, professional development, preparation, and support to be successful. And principals need similar support.

Principals and assistant principals are responsible for instructional leadership staff development, school culture, student achievement, family engagement, community relationships, and school operations. Yet we often place individuals into these positions without adequately preparing or supporting them.

Recent research in ICER's Alaska Educator Turnover Study reinforces the importance of a stable principal. When Alaskan teachers were surveyed about the 10 most important characteristics of a school, The word principal ranked among the top 3, and principal or school leadership appeared in 5 of the top 10 characteristics. Our communities recognize that leadership matters. Unfortunately, principal turnover in Alaska is now increasing faster than teacher turnover. The 2026 report by the Learning Policy Institute found that principals are the single most influential factor shaping student learning teacher retention, and school climate, making leadership investment one of the highest leverage strategies available to policymakers seeking to improve education.

Alaska has already invested in addressing these challenges through Alaska School Leadership Academy, or ASLA, and its Early Career Principal Support Program. This is the only statewide program of its kind specifically designed to mentor, provide professional development and comprehensive support to new principals and assistant principals. Unfortunately, state funding was cut by deed in 2025 without any explanation. Despite that loss, the program has continued on a shoestring budget because those individuals believe it's valuable and the data says it works. As a 5th-year building leader, I'm personally a product of this program.

The mentorship, relationships, and preparation I received were instrumental in my success. They've also shaped how I mentor and support the students and staff that I serve. Today, 80% of the principals who have completed this program are still here in Alaska serving as principals. That's a meaningful outcome in a state struggling to recruit and retain school leaders. We do not need to start from scratch.

We need to recognize, strengthen, and invest in what's already working. We ask the task force We ask the task force to acknowledge the impact and its importance of recruiting, retaining, and training Alaska's principals by including support for school leadership, its pipeline projects, and specifically ASLA in its final recommendations. We cannot continue to expect principals to lead improvement, support teachers, and build relationships and advocate for students without investing in their own preparation and development. Thank you for your time and your continued commitment to Alaska's children and public education. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. I don't see any questions from committee members, but I want to thank you again for taking the time to call in today. We currently have no more individuals in the queue. We're going to take a brief recess and wait for additional folks to either arrive at the Fairbanks LIO to provide in-person testimony or to call in.

Uh, once again, you can call one of the three following numbers if you would like to provide, uh, public testimony. It is— calling from Anchorage, please dial 907-563-9085. From Juneau, the number is 907-586-9085. From all other locations, the toll-free number is 1-844-586-9085. We'll take a brief at ease as we wait for additional folks to join us to testify.

Brief at ease.

And we're back on the record here in the Anchorage Legislative Information Office hearing testimony from the Fairbanks LIO. We still have no one else online and no one has called in, so we are going to take approximately a half-hour recess. For folks who would like to call in, we will reconvene here at 3:00 PM. We will be hearing from folks who will be out of the State Capitol building. If you are listening and are interested in providing in-person testimony and you are in Juneau, Alaska, the committee room of the Betty Davis Committee room will be where we begin that testimony at 3 PM.

Senator Kiehl will be there to welcome you and to manage the in-person testimony.

If there is anyone who would like to provide audio testimony from an online source, I encourage you to hold for the next half hour as we will reconvene at 3 PM. So a recess until 3 PM.

All right, we will bring the Joint Legislative Task Force on Education Funding back to order. I am Senator Jesse Kiehl. I am presiding here for the in-person testimony in the State Capitol building in Juneau. On the telephone line, I see at the moment we have Representative Andi Story as well as Representative Justin Ruffridge. I believe Senator Tobin is still live in the Anchorage Legislative Information Office.

So we're going to begin with folks here in the room. As a reminder to anybody who is interested in calling in from elsewhere around the state, state, uh, we should have plenty of time to get to you. Um, if you are calling from here in Juneau, the number to call is 907-586-9085. If you're calling from within Anchorage, that number is 907-563-9085. And any and everywhere else around the state, you can call us up at 844- 586-9085.

At least we're consistent on the last 4 digits. We're trying to get there. So with that, we will ask testifiers to please limit your comments to 5 minutes each. That's been our practice throughout the day. I've appreciated that all our public testimony testifiers have done a nice job with that.

First up will be Susan Nedza from Juneau City School District, if you'll join us here. And when I acknowledge someone for public testimony, I'll just ask that you begin with your name, any affiliation, whom you represent, and then please proceed with your 5 minutes.

All right. Senator Kiehl, co-chair Senator Tobin, Representative Himschoot, members of the task force, thank you for this opportunity to speak with you today. For the record, my name is Susan Mina. And I'm a superintendent of Juneau City School District. I'm here today to offer my comments on the task force recommendations.

Thank you for the considerable time and hard work reflected in your recommendations and for your efforts to listen to stakeholders across Alaska's diverse communities. I appreciate your commitment to identifying the support students and schools need throughout the state. If the recommendations in this report reach reality, school staff will be able to focus efforts on our true purpose: students. The focus now is on the stress and constant priority of stretching and finding funds to cover the bare basics instead of the well-being of students in our care. I know myself as a superintendent of a very small district that I spend much of my time looking for grants, writing grants, supervising those grants, and trying to find partnerships in any funds where I can to fill the gaps.

I respectfully ask the Task Force to add a specific reference or pay attention as it moves forward for the world languages portion of adequate education. This should explicitly include Alaska Native languages, the need for language revitalization, course offerings in schools, assistance to recruit, prepare, and grow more teachers in this area. I also encourage the Task Force to clarify that students' exposure to curricula and learning opportunities must be intentional and sustained. It should support the development of credit, skills, and meaningful pathways, not consist of occasional brief presentations by visiting speakers without a clear connection to student learning and progress. I appreciate the proposed reading proficiency incentive grant.

At the same time, I urge the state to begin by adequately funding the Alaska Reads Act so that required supports, including after-school tutoring and summer school, can be made available to students in every school. I know now in Juneau City Schools, we do not have the funds to offer after-school school tutoring, and we do not have any summer school opportunities beyond special education because we just don't have the budget for it. One significant additional area of concern is the need to provide free breakfast and lunch to every student. Across Alaska, some schools have stopped providing meals, provide only some meals, charge students, or rely on an increasingly limited general fund to cover this cost. Low federal reimbursement rates and sharply higher food costs, especially shipping costs in remote communities, make meals— meal programs difficult to sustain.

In Juneau, we are at least $100,000 in the hole on our lunch program each year, and we cover that through our general fund.

Every student's access to school meals should be part of the state's vision for an adequate education. Nutritious school meals and universal free meal programs are directly linked to better student attendance, improved focus, and higher academic achievement. At least 9 states already have universal free meals at school, and Alaska needs to follow suit. I'd like to tell a little bit of my own story when I was going through school. I grew up in very rural areas across the United States, moved often, and had a single parent mom.

There were 6 of us. Often the only meals we got were the meals we got at school. And sometimes we would pocket some of those meals to make sure that dinner could happen, my mom could eat, or weekends could happen with some food. So, I had wonderful teachers and counselors who made sure that any leftovers were bagged up for me and handed to me as I left the school. We do that for students across Alaska, and we need to be able to fund that.

Thank you again for your work and for considering these recommendations. Thank you very much for your comments, Superintendent Medza. Our next testifier is Eric Filardi. Eric, if you'll make your way to the front of the room and name and affiliation and begin your 5 minutes.

Representative Hoffman.

Senator Kiehl and members of the Legislative Education Funding Task Force. For the record, my name is Eric Filardi. I am the principal of Mendy Hall River Community School in Juneau, the president-elect of the Alaska Association of Elementary School Principals, an Alaska educator, and a parent. I appreciate the work that you put into these recommendations because the stability you're discussing is something that we're trying to create for children every day.

I have had to move teachers between classrooms and bring in emergency certified educators after the school year has begun. Our staff have worked hard to make those arrangements succeed. But when I say we made it work, I also know what that required of the teachers helping new colleagues, the families adjusting to yet another change, and the children who needed consistency. We do not want we made it work to become our measure of whether Alaska is providing enough for its children. That's what I hope you keep in mind as you consider these recommendations.

A staffing decision becomes part of a child's entire experience at school— who greets them, who recognizes when they're struggling, and whether the support and promise is there tomorrow. Full funding, early year or forward funding, and enrollment averaging would help us protect that consistency. And predictable funding must be adequate. Knowing a shortfall is coming does not give us the resources to close it. We absolutely applaud your recommendations that support funding that recognizes actual costs, keeps pace with inflation, and supports the responsibilities that we place on schools.

I see that clearly in our literacy work. Elementary principals and education leaders truly believe in the expectations of the Alaska Read Act. However, meeting them requires trained educators, time for intervention, and consistent follow-through. When we require schools to do that work, we need to fund what makes it possible. Please put more emphasis in your recommendations of the critical importance of retaining educators.

Competitive compensation, meaningful retirement benefits, and ongoing support are what help people see a future here. My colleagues across Alaska are trying to build lasting school communities while facing very different transportation, housing, energy, and staffing costs. An adequacy study needs to take those differences seriously, and safe buildings and reliable transportation should not continually compete with classroom instruction for insufficient dollars. Please move immediate funding improvements forward while that longer-term work proceeds. Children do not get to pause their education while we settle the funding question.

As principal, I ask my staff to plan carefully, keep improving, and follow through on their commitments to families. I'm asking the state to give us a dependable foundation for doing exactly that. Thank you so very much for your service, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

How's the building at Mendon Hall River Community School these days?

It's, it's tough right now. I will say we, we started this year with 9 general education classrooms set up with 9 teachers, and 6 weeks into the start of the school year, we had to reconfigure our entire building to shift down to 8 classroom teachers. Um, that took an incredible toll on our kids, our families, and their entire community. Thank you. I appreciate the insight.

And thank you for your testimony today. Our next testifier is Lisa Parady.

If memory serves, you are familiar with how this works.

Chair Kiehl, Co-Chair Tobin, and Co-Chair Himschoot, and members of the committee. For the record, my name is Dr. Lisa Parady, and I am the Executive Director of the Alaska Council of School Administrators. On behalf of Alaska's education leaders, thank you for your extensive work and for taking the time to meet directly with superintendents on two separate occasions. We especially appreciate your visit to our school districts, listening to students, families, educators, and community members, and seeing the conditions in which teaching and learning take place brings an essential perspective to these recommendations. Last week, ATSA, along with AASB and NEA Alaska, sent each legislator and the governor-elect a letter asking for 4 action items: full and forward funding, restore pension for public service, and invest in major maintenance school capital construction.

I know that Dr. Aguilar testified to this earlier, and a question was asked at how the number was arrived. Our $254.6 million BSA increase reflects the cost of restoring purchasing power to FY '17 levels. Katie Parrott, whom you heard from earlier, helped develop the figures through Alaska, which is an ACFSA affiliate. And then we worked with your legislative finance division who calculated that adjusting for inflation since FY '17 would require require 1,011 increase to the FY27 DSA, costing the state an estimated $254.6 million. And that's how the number was arrived at.

Your draft recognizes that Alaska's education challenges are interconnected and that every child deserves access to an adequate education wherever they live. I want to begin with a recommendation that may appear to be simple. A procedural change that represents a significant improvement in communication and policymaking. And that is including school district implementation costs in legislative fiscal notes. Please take this with the levity that I intended, but you are very tired of hearing from us about unfunded mandates, and we are very tired of receiving them.

So we appreciate that recommendation. Thank you for also recommending that fiscal notes Identify the resources districts need to implement proposed education policy. A policy can carry substantial costs for schools even when it shows little or no cost to the state. Things like staff time, training, technology, reporting, and ongoing administration all require resources. So making these costs visible will help legislators make informed decisions and help districts communicate what successful implementation actually requires.

Then we encourage you to carry that recommendation through to its practical conclusion. When the state establishes a new requirement, it should provide the funding necessary to implement it. Our highest priority remains timely, reliable, predictable, and adequate funding. Districts need to know their resources before making staffing and program decisions. Uncertainty forces school leaders to issue layoff notices, delay hiring, and consider that destabilize schools and drive talented educators away.

Predictability supports sound financial management, educator retention, and continuity for our students. Most importantly, we appreciate the draft recommendations to stabilize enrollment calculations, specifically Representative Story's HB 261 attempting last year to do this. We also support an independent equity and adequacy study. As you recommend. I echo the remarks of Katie Parrott, particularly with regard to special education and our intensive needs students.

Alaska needs a current credible assessment of what it costs to educate our students across our diverse communities. Your recommendation to evaluate the residential school stipends likewise aligns with our call to recognize the full cost of operating those programs. Thank you for your recommendation to modernize the funding formula. That study should guide lasting improvements while immediate funding needs are addressed. Our students cannot wait for another study to be completed before the classrooms receive that support.

Safe, functional school facilities are another essential priority. We appreciate the recognition that building operations, energy costs, and major maintenance compete directly with classroom instruction. A separate facilities allocation and energy reimbursement should provide additional dependable resources that protect instructional funding. Addressing urgent life and safety needs must also remain a priority. Your recommendation to examine health insurance pooling aligns with our request to consider voluntary district pools that improve affordability and stability.

One area that I, I think we feel needs to be included or enhanced is the commitment to continuing to provide technology access to every student, expanding broadband connectivity and infrastructure. This does remain an equity issue across our state, and we'd love to make sure that that's included as part of the recommendation. And finally, funding must support the people who make learning possible. Recruiting and retaining qualified teachers, principals, superintendents, support staff, and education professionals require stability, competitive compensation, benefits, professional support, and attention to the challenges of serving rural and remote communities. Expectations for literacy, student achievement, and accountability must be accompanied by the capacity to meet them.

We recommend moving this set of recommendations to the short-term recommendations. It's currently in the midterm. We know this is going to be a long-term focus, but it does underpin having a qualified educator in every class. So student success depends on recruiting and retaining these qualified educators. Your work creates an opportunity to move forward a more durable partnership between the state and its school districts, one grounded in clear expectations, honest accounting of costs, and shared responsibility for student success.

Thank you for listening, for visiting our schools, and for recognizing the conditions our educators and our students face. ACSA stands ready. To help turn these recommendations into practical improvements for Alaska children. Thank you for your service.

Thank you very much for your comments.

Mr. Filardi left you an extra minute there, so we let you use it. Appreciated. Thank you, Chair Steele. Thank you. We'll next go online.

We have some testifiers on the telephone. I don't know if Patricia Westbrook in Homer is still available. I know she had waited for a little bit. Ms. Westbrook, can you hear us? Are you able to give your testimony?

She appears to have dropped off. It's a good opportunity for me to remind anyone listening that you can also submit your remarks electronically. Today might not be the best day since there's a major nationwide outage in one of the big email servers. But when you get around to it, the task force's email is EFTF, so Education Funding Task Force, EFTF, at akleg.gov. Abbreviations for Ed Funding Task Force and for Alaska Legislature.

Our next online testifier we have signed up is Rachel Posey from Anchorage. Rachel, if you would put yourself on the record with name and any affiliation. And begin your 5 minutes, please. Thank you.

My name is Rachel Posey.

I'm representing myself, calling in from Anchorage, Alaska. I am a parent, and I'm just calling in initially to say thank you to the task force members for the thorough work and analysis you've done to prepare this report. I'm just calling to express my support for several of the components, but especially the the part about forward funding and earlier, more stable funding for schools. As I've watched my kids and their schools experience, having that stability for the schools to plan and budget and retain teachers and keep them is really critical. So I appreciate that, and I strongly support that part.

I also am in strong support of the— of having equal accountability across all students in our state, whether that's homeschools, charter schools, public schools. All We need to be accountable across the board, and I appreciate that acknowledgement in the report as well. So, again, yeah, I'm just calling to express my appreciation and support for this work, and I really hope that these recommendations can be put into practice quickly. Thank you very much. That's all.

Thank you very much for your testimony. We appreciate you taking the time this afternoon. Are you here to testify as well?

Excellent. Why don't you come on up and then we'll get the other name off the list as well.

Welcome. Hi, Carol Boklis. I, um, I live in Douglas and I'm a teacher and I'm representing Montebello. First, I have to say Eric Filardi is just too polite. He didn't talk about the days the schools were closed, his school was closed this year because the roof was falling apart and had to be repaired.

He didn't talk about the bugs that fall out of the ceiling. He didn't talk about the red, bright red floor that has been in there for how many years, Eric? 42. 42. He doesn't— didn't talk about the 10 years Mendenhall River has been on the list for renovation.

I think it's at least 10. How many years? About 10. But he didn't talk about all of that.

So, first I have to say I'm super happy that this What sorts of task force recommendations are coming forth? I think it's wonderful, and I thank you guys for doing all the work you do. I'm just speaking from the— as a parent and a teacher.

The first thing I'm just going to go through the list of things I have highlighted. One is the teachers choosing fields leave. There's so many good teachers who have gone other places, and I usually write recommendations for my colleagues when they leave. I've written a lot of recommendations lately, and it's really sad because somebody just gets going in their career and they're starting to, you know, really fall into the swing of things, and then they learn that, well, maybe I'm going be lifted for this year. And then the next— the budget comes out next year and it's like, oh, well, we didn't have to lift them, but they're gone.

So, it's really, you know, that— the dependable funding is super duper important.

So, the well-maintained facilities. Again, I talked about that a little bit. Right now, I'm at the Dzánti K'ihéeni campus here in town. Again, bugs falling from the ceiling, mice everywhere, things like that. The 50-year-old carpet is there too.

Like, a lot of these things just aren't getting fixed. When I was there years ago, there— we put buckets underneath the water come from the ceiling. We're still doing it. So you go into the bathroom, you know, the stalls are falling apart, you know, all kinds of stuff. There's just a repair that needs to to be done just on basic health and safety kind of stuff is just abysmal.

Okay, I note here age-appropriate opportunities to participate in all aspects of school life, including all student activities. I'm looking at Yakutsk Bay Dafaheedi Alternative School. We don't have any sports. We don't have the buses to get kids to sports. You know, it's just like, how do we— really motivate them to want to come to school when all the fun things in school are gone.

We don't have— what do you call it— arts, music, those kind of things. We don't have those subjects at our school unless we make a special effort and do what we've been doing is a 2-week workshop where we can bring some of that into the school. But in the regular day-to-day, we don't have that. So, And I don't think we're the only school in that situation. I know we had art programs that went from school to school.

I think those were cut. The cost of delivering services, having it split between the state and the city is super important because money is money, you know, it's got to come from somewhere.

Let's see, equity. I'm thinking of equity of the school facilities. If you have a school that is falling apart and needs to be fixed, that money's got to come from somewhere. And if you're combining that in with the ESA, that means that's less money for students. It's money to fix a building that has to be fixed.

Like, again, Manitowoc River, when I was there a few years ago, the toilets were constantly overflowing. I mean, this is stuff that you really have to have, especially with kindergartners. They can't deal with the overflowing toilets.

Okay, I was just flipping on here.

We need an emergency gas allowance. A lot of schools use, you know, their fuel for heating the school is going to be like really expensive. I don't know if that's a consideration, but maybe that should be part of your funding to make a— I don't want to say slush fund, but maybe make some kind of fund where when you have things like are happening right now where it's an extraordinary expense that isn't normal, that there's some way to access those funds. And then of course, I'm a special education teacher, so I definitely want to see this implementing appropriate diagnostic tools, exploring negotiated agreements for school maintenance, dedicated funding and training for public school administrators and educators to address student housing insecurity. In our school, we have a lot of students who are living at the shelter or they are McKinney-Vento, where they are considered homeless.

That also affects One of the issues that is big on the list here is absences. We have a lot of school— I mean, I looked in the data and I think it's just what I saw, not for our school but across Alaska, 43% of students are chronically absent. That's huge. And we need to address it. We're about a minute over, so please wrap up.

But I did bring this for you guys, the Energy Efficiency Program for K-12 Schools. There's lots of ways to get money if you want it. And I'll probably just leave it. Thank you very much. Thank you for your testimony today.

Our next testifier is Christine Johnson. Christine, if you would come up and put yourself on the record.

Welcome.

Senator Kiehl, co-chairs, and members of the Joint Legislative Task Force on Education Funding. My name is Christine Johnson, and I'm a mother of 4 in Juneau. I'm here today as a parent who has spent considerable time navigating the special education system, advocating for my children, and working to ensure that students with disabilities have access to education and opportunities that they deserve. I want to begin with something I believe should be fundamental every education funding conversation.

A student's disability should never determine the quality of education they receive or the opportunities available to them. Unfortunately, for many Alaska families, that's not always the reality. Special education is too often discussed as an additional expense or a financial burden on already struggling school districts. But special education is not an optional program. It is an essential part of providing an adequate public education.

Education. When a student needs speech therapy, occupational therapy, behavioral support, assistive technology, specialized instruction, or additional support, those needs do not disappear because a district can't afford the staff or resources to provide them. When services are delayed, reduced, or missed, it is the student and their family who bear the consequences. This is exactly where our family has found ourselves. One of our children receives special education services and will be entering kindergarten next year.

Over the past year, we have spent a significant amount of time advocating not only for him but ultimately the other students receiving special education services in our district. As we begin conversations about what kindergarten could look like for our son and which programs might best meet his needs, we found ourselves exploring homeschool, not because we think we can do it better, but because if we are going to be pouring all of our time into his education, we'd rather it go direct pleads with him than to spend our time fighting the school district. Over the last year, we've worked tirelessly alongside his teachers and school administration, urging district leadership to ensure appropriate and safe, safe staffing and consistent implementation of his IEP in a classroom of just 12 students for 10 hours a week. At one point, when we raised concerns about a staffing gap that would leave the district out of compliance with his IEP, We were told the district was hoping to secure grant funding before posting the additional position. The need for support was already identified, but the ability to address it was being tied to funding— to finding funding.

Now, as we begin considering kindergarten, we recognize the tremendous opportunities that being part of a general education classroom could offer our son. We also recognize how heavily his ability to access those opportunities may depend on consistent individualized individualized support. After a year of struggling to ensure that even his existing supports are consistently provided, it's difficult to approach these conversations with confidence— with confidence. This is not a decision we take lightly. Our son loves school.

We value his teachers, the staff who work with him, and the opportunities and skills that come from being a part of the school community. We wanted to have those opportunities, but when decisions about Meeting his needs are continually viewed through the lens of a budget line item and what the district can afford rather than what he needs to access his education safely and meaningfully. He's not being given a fair opportunity to, to succeed. I appreciate that this task force has recognized the limitations of Alaska's existing education funding formula and specifically recommended examining additional funding multipliers and multiple weights for students with Special needs. I urge you to take that recommendation further.

First, modernize special education funding. Commission a comprehensive analysis of the actual costs of educating students with disabilities and establish funding rates that recognize different levels of need and the reality of meeting those needs in Alaska. Second, improve accountability and transparency. Require districts to track and report special education staffing vacancies, require IEP service minutes, services actually delivered, and the reason services are missed. We cannot evaluate whether funding is adequate unless we measure whether students are receiving the services they're promised.

Third, provide stable and predictable funding. Students with significant needs do not arrive on a convenient enrollment count base. Funding must account for students who enroll or develop additional needs throughout the school year, enabling districts to to hire qualified staff and deliver services when needed. I also want to recognize our special education teachers, paraprofessionals, and related service providers. They are often asked to do extraordinary work with inadequate staffing and limited resources.

We cannot continue to place the responsibility for systemic funding gaps on the shoulders of individual educators. The task force proposed definition of an adequate education includes ensuring that students' diverse learning needs are met. That commitment must be reflected in Alaska's funding formula, legislation, and accountability measures. Families should not have to become full-time advocates to ensure their children receive an appropriate education. Our children are not budget line items.

They are students, classmates, and members of our communities. Their ability to access school in a meaningful and appropriate way only has positive long-term effects on the entire community. Community and society. They deserve an education system designed to meet their needs, not one that asks them to fit within the limitations of an inadequate funding formula. Thank you for your time and your consideration.

Thank you very much for your comments this afternoon. Thank you for all the effort you put into being part of the solution.

Do we have anyone else here in the room who is wanting to provide testimony this afternoon?

I don't see anyone else currently on the telephone. So let me just remind anyone who might be listening online or otherwise that you can call in from anywhere in the state. The statewide call-in number is 844-586-9085. If you're calling from Anchorage, you could go with 907- 9085, or from here in the capital city, 907-586-9085. With that, I think we will stand in recess for 20 minutes to see if we can collect some more testifiers.

That would bring us back at 10 minutes till 4:00. We are in recess.

We will come back to order this public testimony hearing of the Legislative Task Force on Education Funding. We do have an additional caller on the line for public testimony. Erika Beery, if you will please introduce yourself with your name and any affiliation and proceed with your testimony. You have 5 minutes.

Thank you.

My name is Erika Beery, and I am in Juneau, Alaska. I am speaking on my own behalf. I appreciate the research and hard work put into these recommendations. As a homeschool educator with children enrolled in a correspondence school, Sorry, I need to mute my computer.

So sorry. Okay. I muted my computer. Okay. So a few of these points do raise concerns.

Some of these points seem to threaten parent choice and school choice. And I would like to encourage you to defend these rights and not try to take them away from anyone, especially not those— taking those rights from one group and not others. On page 9, the part about incorporating correspondence programs into a broader brick-and-mortar framework, assuming that the post-pandemic research results regarding the efficacy of education when brick-and-mortar schools suddenly had to go online and virtual without preparation or curriculum that was designed for that setting, that that would apply to the homeschool setting is just not applicable. Those are two fundamentally separate populations and settings, and the results from one just can't be applied to the other.

On page 5, the section that says, Taught by qualified educators who are provided the time and support for professional development. I would suggest amending to taught and/or supported by in order to not exclude home educators who are not certified teachers.

Let's see. And Alaska spending on education is one of the highest in the country. But performance overall is one of the lowest. And I would strongly suggest spending time figuring out the root causes of the problems instead of just throwing more money at the problems. And correspondence schools are not the problem, although a lot of the education legislation has been targeting them for the last few years.

Out of the public school model options, Correspondence schools are the least funded. They receive only 90% of the BSA, but not the multipliers. These multipliers are not applied to homeschool correspondence school. Some districts receive well over $100,000 per student after multipliers, while correspondence schools receive only 90% of the BSA. As Alaskans, we are blessed with multiple school models to choose from, and no one single school model works for all students.

So, we need to retain all of these models and not sacrifice one community in order to raise another. Let's look for solutions that are win-win for all school models and won't step on school choice or parent rights. Thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony. I should have begun by noting that we are joined not only by Representative Story online and Representative— excuse me, and Senator Tobin in the Anchorage Legislative Information Office, but also by Representative Himschoot in Sitka joining us online.

And she has been here throughout the public testimony where I've been coordinating the callers. I believe we now have Patricia Westbrook back online from Homer. Patricia, if you can hear us, sorry about the difficulty earlier. Please put yourself on the record with your name and any affiliation. And you have as much as 5 minutes for your testimony.

Thank you so much. Apologize that I had to disconnect previously. My name is Patricia Westbrook and I'm a resident in Homer, Alaska. I am a grandmother of 3 children. They do not attend school here, but nonetheless, I appreciate the work you're doing for the children in Alaska and in the Kenai area.

I would ask that you would consider seriously the need for free lunch and breakfast for the children. I was very fortunate not to have a need for assistance when my own children were growing up, but I understand how important it is for every child to have breakfast and lunch at least every day. So whatever you can do to make that happen would be a priority in my mind. In addition, I would like you to continue to consider adopting a definition of adequate education. What does that mean?

And to initiate equity and adequate— adequacy studies to make school funding stable, timely, and consistent. So that it's not a, you know, a guessing game every year before school starts about what funding is available. I'd ask you to continue working to adjust the BSA for inflation, to separate the annual facility operation funding needs from the BSA. Address the crisis of Alaska's current public school facility stock. And the only other thing I would say right now, just to keep it short, is to address the rising energy costs in the school districts.

I thank you so much for what you're doing, and I appreciate you taking the time to hear me today. And that's all I have to say.

Thank you very much, Ms. Westbrook. Thank you for your testimony this afternoon. I have no one else currently in the room here in Juneau.

Do we have anyone else online? Okay. We are going to take a half an hour and we will recess for now. We will come back at 4:30 PM to give another opportunity opportunity for anyone who calls in between now and then. As a reminder to anyone listening online, the call-in numbers from here in Juneau, 907-586-9085.

The call-in number from Anchorage is 907-563-9085. And from everywhere else in the state, 844-586-9085.

9085. With that, we will recess until half past 4.

Your line is on mute.

It is 4:30 PM. I will call back to order the Joint Task Force— Legislative Task Force on Education Funding. I do not currently see any questions. We don't currently have any additional folks either in the room here in the Capitol building or dialed in to testify. And so what we will do now is invite folks to call in for when we begin again at 5:00 PM.

Calling from most of the state, you can dial 844-586-9085.

Calling from Anchorage, 907-563-9085, or from here in Juneau, 907-586-9085. At the 5 o'clock hour, the priority will be for public testimony from the Kenai Legislative Information Office. And when folks physically present in Kenai are finished, they will— we will go to online callers again. But while I've been reading the numbers, we have had someone else join the call. And so before we recess, I want to make sure we hear from Arianna Martinez.

Arianna, if you would please put yourself on record with your name and any affiliation. You have 5 minutes. We'd like to hear from you. Please proceed. Hello.

My name is Arianna Martinez. I am from Sterling. I thank you for this opportunity to speak here. I am a homeschool mother. I have 6 sons, and I am very excited to see the change and growth that the Educational Task Force is eager to bring to our schools.

But while we are looking to bring change and hopefully good change, I also want to address some things that have been said in the past and maybe have been inferred. One of the great things I like about this state that I moved to 6 years ago is the very unique choice that parents have, where we can do correspondence school, we can do charter school, we could do private school, and we could do brick-and-mortar public school. And it seems that the new proposal, that some of the things for correspondence schools or charter schools might be changed or maybe be inferred in a way that parents wouldn't have much of a choice. I would just love to see that the educational task force and all they're going to do, if they would keep parent choice as one of the very first things that is maybe brought to the forefront because I think it's a very uniquely Alaskan and American thing that we have such a great state that allows parents to choose what is for their students, what's best for their children because in the end Parents are the ones that are going to be the most educated, invested in their children's education, and also make the biggest impact of that. So, I would just thank the task force for all that they're going to be doing and do, and ask that everybody keep that in the forefront, that we all do employ our choice here, and whenever policies are made, that we do keep that as one of the things that would be the most important.

And that would be my piece to say. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ms. Martinez. We appreciate you giving us some of your time this evening. I have Jacob Barra who has called in as well.

Mr. Barra, it's good to see your name on the list again. If you would please identify yourself for the record, you have 5 minutes. Hi, good afternoon. My name is Jacob Barra. I have been an educator in Alaska for 23 years.

More importantly, I'm a parent of 3 kids who are attending neighborhood public North Slope Schools in the Anchorage School District. I read the report by the task force, and I sincerely wanted to thank you for all the time that you took to look deeper into the issues facing Alaska's public schools. There's so much to comment on, but today I really just wanted to focus on my one big area of concern. I definitely believe there's a place here in Alaska for alternative and charter, online and advanced dual credit programs, as well as private homeschooling options. Here in Anchorage, I know good families who take advantage of all these opportunities and they do them well.

And I definitely don't want to pit one program over another. The problem is that the amount of funding available these past years hasn't been able to sustain all of the choices that parents want, especially the ones that allow for the use of public funds. Combined with the long-term downward trends of Alaska's school-age population and the rising cost of just about everything, I mean, we see this every year. Districts are left with making difficult decisions about closing schools. So neighborhood schools based on geographical boundaries are meant to ensure that students have equitable access to the education that's guaranteed in our Alaska Constitution.

My strong concern is when the cost of providing charter alternative programs negatively impacts the quality of what neighborhood schools can provide. And here in the Anchorage School District, most of those programs don't provide transportation, which really concerns me. I believe it leads to the segregation of students whose families have the means from those who must rely on their neighborhood schools. So when approaching the definition of an adequate education, what is the state's responsibility and what are we willing to pay for? During these many years of underfunding, communities still want it all, and every year school boards hear from families and interest groups fighting for their particular program.

Approving a new program makes matters worse, which actually happened here in Anchorage last year at the very same meeting in which the administration laid out the deepest budget cuts I've ever seen in my entire career. So for me, we either pay for and provide the funding to have it all and the choices parents want, or we fall back and strengthen the programs that provide the most equity and opportunity for all Alaska students. When folks say we can't just keep throwing more money at the problem, I say we can't make the problem worse by thinning out the quality of schools that every child has access to. Just to ensure those who want other options can have them paid for by the state. So don't get me wrong, there are great things happening at alternative and charter programs, and in some cases, especially in rural areas, they may be necessary.

And I have a tremendous amount of respect for families who want to take their education into their own hands and do it well. Anyone who is positively engaged in their kids' education and making it work has my Kudos. But for everyone else, perhaps we can incorporate more of what they do well into neighborhood schools so we can consolidate best practices for everyone. Or we can continue to fund and expand every additional program. And what we need to do is just be honest about what that's actually going to cost.

And as Alaskans, we have to own it and pay for it. So unless Alaskans are also willing to pay for equal access for all students to attend, it's only going to continue separating the haves from the have-nots during their educational experience. And it's also going to weaken the guarantee that Alaska's Constitution guarantees for every child. Thanks for taking the time to listen to my comments today. Thank you very much for giving us some of your evening.

We have another caller who's come on the line. Beth, with us. Beth, if you would please give us your name. And any affiliation. You have 5 minutes.

Sure. My name is Beth, and I am a community member in Juneau, Alaska. And thanks for the work you're doing. My goal is to impart to you all that, yes, building maintenance is important for sure. Um, but the students come first and the class sizes just need to be reduced.

There should be 22 students in a classroom, and this is through 7th grade, 8th grade. Uh, reallocate admin, lower classroom pullouts. There's way too many. Um, I think you have to reduce purchasing new curriculum and allow for read-alouds in all of those classrooms, K through 8.

And our— in Juneau, we have classrooms in 3rd grade with 32 kids. We have middle schools where the middle school teacher has Beth, are you still there? We seem to have lost your sound. Can you hear us?

One more try. Beth, we're not getting any words. Are you able to adjust your sound?

Why don't we end that call? I will let everyone know that you can follow up with written testimony. Written comments by email. The task force's email address is TFEF, so Task Force Education Funding, [email protected].

And Beth, if you're able to call back in, perhaps we can try again. I'm sorry that they had a technical technical difficulty. Melinda Degnan has called in from North Pole. Melinda, if you would put your name and any affiliation on the record, you can proceed with your testimony. Hi, thank you for the time.

My name is Melinda Degnan. I'm a homeschool mom of two with the IDEA Correspondence Program.

Go ahead. All right. So first, I just want to say thank you for taking the time. I bet this is a very long day for you, so I appreciate you taking the time to listen to everyone. I'm glad that this is an issue that's being addressed.

It's heartbreaking to hear about the struggles that brick-and-mortar students are having, that teachers are having. So I'm glad that's being taken care of. But as a homeschool mom, there were some concerns I had. And I want to point out that the first statement that I kind of had some disagreement with was the statement that a loss of public trust in our education system is due to systemic underfunding. While underfunding does cause some inadequacies in the school system, and that was the motivation for not going with a brick-and-mortar school, it wasn't the only reason.

The, there's the individual attention and individually customized education that I can give my children could never be affordable for a brick-and-mortar school. In addition to that, there is an increasing number of schools that are teaching certain subjects that at ages either I don't deem appropriate for my children or that just go against our family values or beliefs. So using the Correspondence School Program ensures that we have funding for non-religious education material and services while protecting our freedom to raise and educate our children in the way we believe is right. So there is some concerns that further restrictions on our curriculum choices and our rights could be damaged with wording such as exposure locally adopted curricula. As a parent, that concerns me that, um, it may inflict restrictions on what I can choose for curriculum for my students that work well for my students.

The other concern is page 9's incorporating public correspondence programs into a brick-and-mortar framework. Most families, including ourselves, homeschool because the brick-and-mortar framework isn't what we want or need.

So that, that verbiage concerns me. Earlier today, another caller mentioned, uh, it's on page 5, there's the wording "taught by qualified educators," and she suggested adding the wording "or supported by qualified educators," and I just wanted to second that suggestion because that was some verbiage that had me concerned. So I think clarifying that either it's a qualified educator or supported by, so that would include the homeschool families. And so that concludes it. I apologize.

I just want to say, you know, I would like to ask how we help the funding issue by going after homeschool freedoms. So just making sure not to assume that anyone is trying to attack our freedoms, but just making sure that we're careful how we word things that don't take away the current rights that homeschool families enjoy, and while also still appropriately funding non-religious curriculum materials for families so that they have access to that. And then just making sure that we're spending money wisely and not increasing administrative burdens and costs with adding more restrictions and then having to pay for people to then enforce those restrictions that won't necessarily help the students overall. So thank you again for your time. I apologize, I'm not the most eloquent speaker, but appreciate you giving me the time to speak.

Uh, no, no eloquence issues found, and thank you for taking some of your evening to share your thoughts with us. Um, with that, uh, we are out of testifiers for the moment. We will send a recess for 15 minutes and the chair will be— the gathering will be picked back up from Kenai at 5:00 PM. Folks in the Kenai LIO will— should be testifying first and additional callers on the line there after the 5:00 PM start, we'll get to you as soon as the— they're through the folks in person and Kenai. So thanks again to everyone who's testified this afternoon.

We have one more round beginning at 5:00 PM. With that, we'll stand in recess.

Okay, welcome back to the Education Task— Funding Task Force public comment period. This is Representative Justin Ruffridge in the Kenai LIO, taking in-person testimony tonight at 5 PM. And we are joined by a few folks here in the room, and we will begin public testimony. Public testimony will be open for 5 minutes per person, and I will keep time over here myself. And we have a few folks signed up in the room for testimony, and We will begin with Nettie Keller, and you can begin your testimony, and you have 5 minutes.

Hi, I'm Nettie Keller. First off, thank you to co-chair Senator Tobin and Representative Himschoot. I am what you call a K2 girl fan— fan girl, as of 2 years. Thanks to a dear friend who will not be named, I probably should have a prize for the constituent with the most watched House floor and committee sessions. I've had opportunity to hear each of you from this task force speak and speak from your heart.

I can see your desire to serve your constituents to the best of your ability and that you honor your position that you have been elected to serve. I hope someday truly to meet you all in person and to thank you in person. My husband and I are the parents of 7 children between the ages of 10 to 22, 5 boys, 2 girls. I've been homeschooling for 17 years and have lived in Alaska for 22. My husband is both a commercial and charter fishermen.

When we first moved here in 2004, we lived in a one-room cabin with no plumbing or electricity for 2 years, and we're crazy about wrestling. I believe we're what one could call a tough Alaskan family. We love living here. Alaska has provided so many opportunities and experiences for us, but why do most people come up here? We make up a very diverse state.

As proof, our voting record changes from term to term. As my character Martha Watson would say from the production White Christmas, This is Alaska. We individuals up here. Many people come up here from— for adventure and freedom in the last frontier. School choice is the forefront for many families.

We want to experience as much Alaska as possible while educating our children at the same time. Alaska has been setting a precedent for school choice. The best place in the nation to homeschool, in my opinion. There is so much support along with dozens of local people offering their expertise and professional skills outside the public school structure and is educating many of Alaska's children. I have a unique perspective.

While I've homeschooled for 17 years, I recently decided last school year to enter my two youngest into our local brick-and-mortar school at the ages of 9 and 11. My older daughter, who was a sophomore at the time— last year, also decided on her own to enter our local high school, Soldotna High. It's been a positive experience for us. Naturally, I wanted to be a part of this process. And I decided to begin substitute teaching at the elementary school my two youngest attended.

What I found there was dedicated and loving teachers and staff doing their best to provide educational services to all the children there. I got to experience serving my fellow staff members and loving on the students. I've enjoyed it so much I've decided to begin working towards my bachelor's degree of arts for music education, which is sorely needed in my community. I'm currently registered for online classes at the University of Alaska Fairbanks starting in January, but will have to leave for that in to finish my education physically in Fairbanks. This year my daughter, who is now a junior, decided to homeschool again, while my 14-year-old son, who is a freshman, continues to adamantly refuse to attend a brick-and-mortar school, although he doesn't quite have that decision entirely to himself.

My two youngest are still attending Kuldana Elementary, and I continue to substitute from time to time. This is the result. Of the many options in my community. I want to respect my children's desires to do what works for them and what works for me. My daughter feels the time constraints for her personally when attending a brick-and-mortar school on a daily basis.

My husband, as I said, is a commercial fisherman, and homeschooling has been ideal for my children to learn and participate in this trade right in the middle of a normal school year. School is not a one-size-fits-all, and coming from both sides of the educational aisle I would ask you all to keep in mind how diverse a state we are. Learning can be done through a variety of avenues. As Alaskans here, I would hope that we encourage independence and growth, trailblazing the way for the rest of the nation to reach outside the box of the norm. Let's do what Alaskans do best and encourage exploration of how our children are educated.

I have so enjoyed the benefits of schooling my children in Alaska. Please keep our options open and let school choice abound. We are so grateful for what Alaska has been able to offer our family. Thank you.

And thank you for your testimony.

For those listening online, just a reminder that we are here in person in the Kenai LIO, but you still have an opportunity to call in if that is something that you wish to do. You may call in from the Anchorage area at 907-563-9085 If you're calling in from Juneau, that's 907-586-9085. And then all others, you can call in toll-free at 1-844-586-9085.

And we will stay here in the room. We have next signed up for testimony Tiffany Holt. Please begin your testimony when you're email— when you're ready. And you may also email your testimony in if that is something that you choose to do as well. And I will give that email hear later.

And Tiffany, you have 5 minutes.

Um, I really appreciate the desire of the state to remedy very longstanding issues regarding education and funding in education in our state. It's been problematic for a very long time. Um, I read through the task force, um, educational recommendations today, and I definitely appreciate, um, them trying to stabilize the BSA with the 3-year average of students and their attendance. I definitely agree with adjusting the BSA for inflation. That's been problematic for quite a while, especially with the current rate of inflation.

And I absolutely agree with separating facility operations out of BSA. That— I'm on the Kenai Peninsula, and that has been very problematic in our district and has resulted in closures of schools and of the possibilities for the community. I just want to tell you a little bit about my experience. I've been homeschooling for 19 years. I have 7 children.

All but 2 have graduated. All of my children so far have graduated from the Alaska school system through the IDEA program, except for one. One of my children graduated from Stowe High. I have an appreciation for both public and private school and for homeschooling. Homeschooling.

I firmly believe in school choice. Within my own family, we had, you know, 7 kids who had a variety of needs for their education, and we took the route for one of my children to attend Phil High for high school because that was what he needed. And I found great teachers who were willing to educate my children and meet them where they were at. But I would like to talk about how the state continually, and our local district regularly talks about how homeschoolers are problematic and how we test well below standards. My children are a testament to the opposite of that.

My children, all 7 of them, test far above average. They excel in their schoolwork. They excel in their community involvement. They are heavily involved in sports and extracurricular activities. Curriculars.

Um, and I think it's a disservice at best to say that homeschoolers are not meeting educational standards. By far the majority of people that I know— and I know a lot of homeschoolers in our area and across the country, actually— and they far exceed the standards that are put out. Um, my children have tested for state standardized testing, and without fail, they have always tested above average. Including my daughter, who due to some health problems was suicidal for 4 years. Even she, through our homeschooling, was able to meet that, and the public school would not have been able to help her.

So, on page 9 in the task force recommendations, there is definitely— there is definitely something I wanted to address, and it's something I hear continually when I attend and school board meetings is that there is a very large push to bring homeschooling children into brick-and-mortar facilities, and I think that is a disservice to our children in our community. Um, it is not fair to these kids, some of whom have to drive 30 minutes to an hour to make it to the school system, uh, to the brick-and-mortar schools, to ask them to do that. The parents have chosen to do this because they feel that it meets their children's educational needs in a better manner. Alaska should be looking at— because we are a very diverse state with very diverse needs and very diverse communities— we should be looking at better ways to facilitate educational learning models with all students in Alaska.

Particularly on page 9, it says the school district investigate effective methods for incorporating public correspondence programs into broader brick-and-mortar framework. I do believe that if you change that focus to how to better support all educational models and fund them fairly, I think you will be able to better increase the scores that you're looking for. I think you should take a hard look at the educational models that you have in your current schools.

30% Proficiency reading at an 8th grade level is absolutely abysmal. That needs to be remedied. And you cannot legislate your way out of educational failure. You have got to address teacher retention. You have got to address the curriculum problems.

You have got to address the failure to meet students where they are at. And it can be done, but forcing homeschoolers into the school system to get more money is not the answer. We are performing very far above your standard. Homeschooling is affordable to the state. We save you money continually.

I buy curriculum for my children and I use it for every child after that. I have— like I said, I have moved through 7 kids and I do not buy curriculum every year. I have friends who are teachers in the school and they are continually getting new curriculum. And that's just one area where things could be addressed, where the excess of spending goes. It is far cheaper to educate a homeschool child than a public school child.

I would, I would really like you to take that into account when you look at ways to remedy the situation. If I'm willing to take a hard look at where my kids are at academically, the state should be willing to take a hard look at where they are with their efforts in funding and providing for the children in our state. Thank you. And thank you for your testimony. And then we have a few more folks signed up in the room for testimony.

But just as a general reminder, you're also able to call in for testimony. I gave those numbers just a minute ago, but I will give the email as well right now, which is TFEF, which is T-F-E-F, that's T like Tom, F like Frank, E-F like Frank, @akleg, that's A-K-L-E-G, .gov. And feel free to email in those comments as well. Next on our list for public testimony is Leanne Craig, and when you're ready, you can give your testimony, and you will have 5 minutes. Thank you.

My name is Leanne Craig, and thank you for giving me this time to speak. My children graduated from a correspondence homeschool program in Alaska. I appreciated on page 3 of your recommendations that you listed Alaska Alaska Statute 14.03.015. It is the policy of this state that the purpose of education is to help ensure that all students will succeed in their education and work, shape worthwhile and satisfying lives for themselves, exemplify the best values of society, and be effective improving the character and quality of the world about them. That is what homeschooling is about, as parents desire the best for their children and seek to shape and mold the children that they have been given.

To them. I was thankful to be able to guide my children and encourage their interests and strengths and areas also where they could use some support. I could provide that. I'm appreciative for the support I received and the freedom to homeschool my two children. My son is a member of the armed services and my daughter is currently working on her graduate degree funded by her employer, BMW.

She's also part of the Big Brothers Big Sisters program and is seeking to pour into another young lady. On page 7, I appreciate the value you see in separating the annual facility operation funding from the BSA and to adjust the BSA for inflation as it hasn't been adjusted for a long time and we all are feeling the effects of the economy. On page 4, paragraph 2 is the sentence, equally important, an adequate education must also consider what the "school community determines is necessary for its students to succeed in life." This is the parent's job, not the school community's job. Should parents choose a brick-and-mortar education for their children, they make that choice, and the parents have the expectations that the school will educate their children in the particular subjects they are taking. A major concern, in addition, is page 9, where it states in paragraph 4 that the task force recommends that school districts investigate effective methods for incorporating public correspondent programs— correspondence programs into a broader brick-and-mortar framework, acknowledging extensive post-pandemic research indicating that for most students, in-person learning significantly outperforms online and distance learning.

I imagine brick-and-mortar students were at home during COVID and they maybe showed up for online class. That could be true. But homeschooling is in-person learning where there's often one-on-one tailored teaching. I know families who are forced home to do the distance learning through their brick-and-mortar school found out that the one-on-one teaching at home allowed their children to thrive. They made a change and chose the correspondence homeschooling program that supported them.

Thank you for your time. And thank you for your testimony.

All right. We have a couple more folks signed up for testimony in the room. And again, for those listening online, you can feel free to email your testimony in to TFEF, that's [email protected]. Phone number to call in if you're not able to make it in person, toll-free statewide is 844-586-9085. Next up in the queue, we have Linda Ruffridge.

And if that name sounds familiar, that is my mother, for the record. And hopefully she keeps her testimony brief.

No, just kidding. Linda Ruffridge, you have 5 minutes.

Well, my name is Linda Ruffridge, as Justin stated, and I am from Kenai, Alaska. And first, I would like to begin by thanking the members of the task force for your dedication and for the amount of time that you have been invested in examining education funding and ways to strengthen educational opportunities for all of Alaska's students. I support several recommendations in the report, including adjusting the base student allocation for inflation, as well as using a 3-year averaging approach to provide funding stability.

I also support establishing a separate fund for facility maintenance. However, I do have some concerns about the recommendation on page 9, particularly if its intent is an attempt to move students from correspondence programs back into traditional brick-and-mortar schools. As a former homeschooling parent, I do want to emphasize that homeschooling is not a lesser form of education, nor is it something students need to be moved away from. Homeschooling is intentional, parent-directed, in-person instruction that is tailored to a child's individual needs, strengths, and pace. The report recognizes the importance of partnerships between schools, families, tribes, and communities.

True partnerships must also respect parents as meaningful decision makers in their children's education. I can speak from personal experience. All 3 of my children were homeschooled. Schooled. All three went on to graduate from college and are educated, independent adults who contribute to their communities.

The flexibility of homeschooling played an important role in their success. I believe parents, not the state, should determine which educational setting best meets their children's needs. Public schools, charter schools, private schools, and homeschool correspondence programs all serve families in different ways. Many families move between these options as their needs change. That choice should remain with parents.

Today, the Alaska Beacon published an article that was very concerning to me. It stated, and I quote, "Currently, state law allows homeschool parents and guardians to opt their student out of state testing. This is a false and misleading statement. In fact, to be accurate, it should read—" quote, state law allows all parents and guardians to opt their students out of state testing, classes, or programs the parent finds objectionable. AS 14.03.016 is not a unique law just for homeschoolers.

It applies to all students in Alaska. This law was passed in 2016 by the Alaska State Legislature. Finally, I urge you to preserve school choice within Alaska's correspondence programs. Families should be able to select the program that best fits their needs, including statewide programs that provide consistency regardless of where in the state their jobs may move them. Education should be about what works best for the child, not about where the child sits during the school day.

Parents deserve the freedom to make that choice, and Alaska should respect and protect it. Please strengthen Alaska's educational opportunities without limiting the choices that have allowed so many families and students to succeed. I ask you to preserve the positive steps towards stable funding while affirming that homeschooling families are valued partners in Alaska's public education system. Thank you for your time.

And thank you for your testimony.

And we do have one other individual signed up for testimony at this time, and we still have no other folks on the phone, it doesn't seem like. So I'll give those numbers one more time for those online. It's 844-586-9085, and then you can also email those comments to [email protected]. And next up in the queue, we have Georgia James. And whenever you're ready, you can begin your testimony, and you have 5 minutes.

Thank you. Hello, my name is Georgia James, and I live in Kenai, Alaska. Thank you for taking time to listen to public testimony. One of my greatest concerns with the recommendation to incorporate correspondence programs into traditional brick-and-mortar framework is that it could undermine the very purpose of school choice. School choice should mean more than selecting a different building or program name.

It should provide families with genuinely different approaches to education that meet the individual needs of their children. When educational options are required to operate within the same framework, we risk eliminating the innovation, flexibility, and parental involvement that make those alternatives successful. Meaningful school choice also creates an incentive for all schools to improve. When families have options, schools must continually evaluate how well they are serving students, respond to parent concerns, and seek ways to provide a better educational experience. Without those alternatives, there is less pressure to challenge the status quo or to make meaningful improvements.

Rather than requiring successful alternative educational models, to become more like traditional schools, we should be asking what we can learn from their approaches and how those lessons might benefit all students. The goal should not be to make every school look the same. The goal should be to ensure that every child has access to an education that works for them. I would also encourage policymakers to take a closer look as to why so many families are choosing to leave the traditional educational model in favor of alternative options rather than focusing on bringing those alternatives back into a traditional framework. We should be asking what needs are not met and what concerns are driving families to seek other options, what traditional schools can learn from those decisions.

Families are making intentional choices about their children's education, and those choices deserve to be heard and understood. We should not force families back into an education model they have intentionally chosen to— they have intentionally chosen to leave or to eliminate the meaningful choices available to them. Instead, we should seek to understand why families are pursuing alternatives and use that knowledge to strengthen public education while preserving the flexibility and options that allow every child to thrive. Thank you.

Thank you for your testimony.

I think that comes to the end of our testimony for in the room. Did have some folks arrive just a second ago, so we will take a brief at ease for approximately 10 minutes, and we will be back online at 5:33. We'll take a brief at ease.

Okay, welcome back online. It's 5:34. We are here in the Kenai LIO. We've been joined by a few new folks in person. Just a reminder, you do not have to be here at the Kenai LIO in person.

You can also call in or email your testimony on the Education Funding Task Force recommendations. The phone number in Anchorage is 563-. 9085. In Juneau, it's 586-9085. And then statewide, it's 844-586-9085.

The email address to the committee is [email protected].

We have a few new folks online for testimony, and then for those who may want to call in, Just a quick note that our queue will close at 6 o'clock so that we have time to make it through the rest of the folks that are online before official testimony will close at 7 o'clock tonight. Next up in the queue, we have Sarah Dopett, followed by Clark Dopett, and then we'll have Jackie Ostrout after that. So be prepared for those testimony. Again, testimony is limited to 5 minutes. And, uh, whenever you're ready, Sarah, you can begin your testimony.

All right, for the record, my name is Sarah Doffett. Um, through the chair, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to provide comments of support on the recommendations from the Joint Legislative Task Force on Education Funding. I am a graduate of the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District, a parent of 4 in Kenai, a small business owner, and currently serve as a member of the Kenai Peninsula North Slope School District Board of Education. However, I am speaking today as an individual and not on behalf of the Board of Education or the school district. I appreciate the valued work of this task force and its willingness to take a comprehensive look at education funding in Alaska.

I believe we need a funding system that are stable, equitable, and focused on student learning while recognizing that the cost of providing education in Alaska varies considerably from one community to another. First, after reviewing your short-term recommendations, I'd like to offer support of all 9 recommendations. While each is extremely important to the success of Alaska students, I would like to particularly offer support of stable, timely, and consistent funding, as well as separate annual facility operation funding needs from the BSA. Funding separate from the BSA. I would like to offer support of the following midterm recommendations, particularly following two.

Reevaluating Alaska's pupil transportation formula is vital to supporting education today. On the Kenai Peninsula, our reach to transport students into our schools is vast and challenging. Addressing the formula to assist with rising costs will greatly improve transportation for our youth. Additionally, reduced transportation budgets and route reductions are continuing to greatly impact our ability to meet school of origin transportation requirements for our unhoused youth and children. Making charter schools more affordable for districts to operate.

The cap on indirect costs to school districts is out of date, and this absolutely needs to reflect the actual costs districts have to pay for helping to manage the charter schools. Third, I'm in support of the task force long-term recommendations, particularly the recommendation that policymakers explore strategies to expand the number of certified CTE instructors in Alaska schools. My oldest son was truly inspired by educators at Kenai Central High School leading him to obtain obtain a diesel mechanic CTE certification after high school. With his new certification, he was able to return to the Kenai community and join our local workforce. Inspiring through expanding CTE educators and offerings will improve our communities for years to come.

Additionally, gaining a better understanding of student absenteeism through a statewide accounting system is a task I strongly support. Let's identify the gaps in programs that prevent students from being in our buildings. Ensuring that students are in school where they can be educated is a top priority. I am grateful for the work of this task force and your heart for education. Children are our future.

They are each deserving of being supported in their education. For some, school buildings are where they are warm, fed, and heard. Let's continue the conversations, and thank you for hearing my supporting statement. Today.

Thank you for your testimony.

Uh, next up in the queue we have Clark Doffett, and, uh, again, you have 5 minutes and you can begin your testimony whenever you're ready.

My name is Clark Doffett. Through the chair, I am a 5th grader at Mountain View Elementary. The staff at my school are really nice, so I want to say thank you for getting me more funds for my school. It makes a big difference in my classroom and helps me grow.

Thank you. Thank you for your very concise testimony. It's much appreciated. I will say I visited Clark at, uh, Mountain View Elementary yesterday. So yesterday, and he was well behaved, and, uh, although he was wearing a Chiefs shirt, which we will not, uh, hold against him.

Is that okay? We're good to go. Chief's from the room. All right, next up in the queue, we have Jackie Ostrub. If you want to begin your testimony whenever you're ready, and you will have 5 minutes.

Thank you. First of all, thank you. I'm a mom here in McKeeskey, and I homeschool my 3 kids, and I want to explain why we do it. First, I want to say that I really do respect the teachers. My dad was a teacher who retired from the school system in 2019.

It's hard and important work, and I know many of them pour themselves into their students. I remember my dad not getting home until 10:00 PM at night oftentimes. I lived at that school. I'm not here to criticize them or any family. I'm here to share what has worked for mine.

My reason comes down to one word: standards. I believe kids do their best when expectations are clear and they're encouraged to meet them. I also believe parents have a part to play. If my child struggles in reading or math or any other subject, it's my job to figure out whether it's the teaching or my students, and then get tutoring or whatever help is needed. I personally hold myself to that.

After one year with the grammar curriculum, I found my kids still couldn't tell an adverb from an adjective. I didn't make excuses for that. I kept the writing curriculum, which was excellent, but I did replace the grammar one, and now they're thriving. I chose the new one specifically because it's what I used when I was at Aurora Borealis, and I still remember all these years later what I learned. I don't spend that much on education.

What I do is require the work and adjust when something isn't working. I test my kids on a nationally normed test so that I know where we need to improve. It's our own benchmark that we check each year, and I do it by choice, not because anyone requires it. This spring, my two older children both scored in the 99th percentile. I know these schools firsthand.

I was homeschooled through 4th grade, attended Aurora Borealis until high school, and graduated from Nakiski High School. Aurora Borealis is a public charter school in our own district, and it's succeeding. It showed me what high expectations can do, including for students who came in struggling. Part of why it works is that parents commit to supporting their kids. And when I see someone doing something well that I personally struggle with, I go and I ask them what they're doing, and I take what applies to me.

I'd love to see our district learn from Aurora because its lessons could help every school. I also understand that not every student will have a parent who can step in, but if we expect involvement from every family, teachers and administrators can focus their time and support on the students who don't have it. In the 2024-25 school year, roughly a third of Alaska's students met the state proficiency standards. I'm certainly not against public schools. I'm really not.

I want them to succeed, and I'd be much more open to them if they reach the standards I described. But today, I'm not comfortable putting my children back into the system, and I don't think forcing families to do so would help the students of the schools or the schools. I'm asking you to make school places families want to be. If a restaurant is empty, the owner doesn't lock the doors and require people to eat there. They ask why.

Is the quality poor? Is the service slow? Is the price too high? And I think the same questions apply to our schools. I think it's important to find out why families are leaving and fix those things, and the enrollment will follow.

I'd certainly be a lot more interested in putting my kids in school if I didn't think that they would get bored, which is what happened to me when I went into high school. I got bored, and then I lost interest in the education, and I just— it didn't end up— I could have done much better if expectations were higher for me personally. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony.

Next in the queue, we'll have Suzanne Alioto. Before we get to that, I will just remind everyone that the phone lines will be closing for new people in the queue at 6 o'clock. So if there's any folks that want to call in, I'll give you those numbers one more time. In Anchorage, it's 563-9085. Juneau, 586- 9085, and then anywhere else in the state is 844-586-9085.

As always, you can email your comments in to [email protected].

Next in the queue, we will have Suzanne Alioto, and when you are ready, you can begin your testimony, and you will have 5 minutes.

Thank you. My name is Suzanne Alioto, and I am— I live in Juneau, Alaska. I have 3 children who were homeschooled all the way through. We actually started our homeschool journey while we lived in California, but we've been in Alaska for a little over 17 years.

So, this is where we call home. This is where we did the majority of our homeschooling. So, like I said, we— when we moved here, we were thrilled with the educational opportunities for our children. Correspondence School, in which we went through, offered so many activities for my children. It was just an amazing opportunity for them.

So, we homeschooled all the way through except for the exception of one year where my daughter attended private school. And even at the age of 12 years old, one— she was there for one year, she came to me and she said, "Mom, homeschooling is way more efficient with my time." And I was pretty impressed with that. So, by the time— when high school rolled around, she came back home. And really what we did was we really appreciated the flexibility of homeschooling that we can meet their needs. My husband and I first decided to homeschool because we wanted to value our family time.

But our children quickly surpassed the grade levels in which they were enrolled. I remember once my husband said to me, "You realize you will never be able to put them in brick and mortar school, right?" And because of the flexibility of homeschooling, my children are really well-rounded. They can hunt. They can fish. They can take care of the house.

They can cook. They can manage their finances. All 3 have gone to college. 2 Have since graduated and have their master's degrees. My daughter is currently in her— third year and last year at university, and she's graduating in 3 years because of the flexibility and advantages that she was able to take advantage of taking college classes while in high school.

As for my other children, my oldest son was able to graduate within 5 years with his master's degree. From UAF in mechanical engineering, he was able to pursue his dream job at Garmin and working in aeronautics. And he's working on all the instruments, actually I don't really quite understand everything he's doing. He has surpassed me in all that, but he, all the aeronautics that we see on the planes when we're flying from Kenai to Anchorage. And he was able to get that job at 22 years old because of the college classes that he was able to take in high school.

My middle son, by the age of 23, had his bachelor's and master's degree in hospital administration and is currently working as the assistant controller at a hospital. He is now 24 years old and has been in that position for over a year. And I don't think that without the flexibility and the— we were able to instill confidence in our children because we just poured into them. And I don't think that anybody would be able to do that besides my husband and I for our children. We were able to tailor-make their education to suit their personal needs.

And I'm grateful that we have the opportunity to homeschool, and I'm saddened to hear that we might lose this freedom for others. Thank you.

Thank you for your testimony.

Right. We have a couple more folks in the queue ready to testify. Next up, and if you could come sit up here, the next folks. So I have Alyssa and then I have Courtney, just so you're closer to the microphone. Phone.

So next up in the queue is Alyssa, and I'm gonna get it right, Coterrier. Coterrier. I didn't get the— oh, you're right. Um, all right, so whenever you're ready, um, you can begin your testimony, and you'll have 5 minutes. My name is Alyssa Coterrier, and we live in the city of Kenai.

I homeschool my 4 children. And one of my children is a boy with Down syndrome, so I also homeschool a child with special needs. I have homeschooled in 3 different states. I've homeschooled in the state of Kansas, the state of Missouri, and the state of Alaska. And through the correspondence program that we chose when we moved here in 2022, we have by far had the best homeschooling experience here in Alaska because of the services and the support that our correspondence school has provided.

My husband is a state trooper, and he's been in law enforcement for over 20 years, and he's been a state trooper since 2021. He currently is a state trooper in western Alaska, and he is one of our reasons why we homeschool, so that when he is home from work, that we are able to spend time with him. We can travel, we can have experiences, and we don't have to worry about the schedule of a brick-and-mortar school. I'm here today as a concerned Alaskan parent regarding the recent task force recommendations surrounding correspondence programs in our state. While the task force does not explicitly call for eliminating homeschooling or correspondence programs, it is recommending a review of the laws and exemptions governing them, including state curriculum, standards, assessments, and oversight, and is exploring ways to bring these programs more closely into the traditional public school framework.

These proposals raise critical questions that demand answers before any action is taken. Will parents retain the fundamental freedom to choose curriculum and direct their children's education? Why are so many Alaskan families choosing alternatives to traditional public schools in the first place? What concrete evidence actually supports the need for additional oversight or restrictions? Are financial and political interests influencing the direction of these recommendations rather than the best interests of the students.

Accountability for public funds is entirely reasonable, and parents support responsible stewardship. However, accountability must not come at the expense of parental authority and educational freedom. Statewide Correspondence Schools are so much more than just administrative programs. They are vital, supportive communities with dedicated, amazing staff and invaluable resources that empower families to succeed. Restricting parents from choosing the correspondence school that best meets their children's need would be a devastating loss to thousands of families across Alaska.

Taking away the freedom to choose our correspondence program and forcing parents into a corner where they must either enroll in a local district option or go completely independent would have severe, far-reaching consequences consequences for our children's education and ultimately the state of Alaska. Parents do not choose to homeschool for petty or trivial reasons. We homeschool because we know our children best, and we know this environment is what allows them to thrive. Regardless of what the task force recommends or what decisions the Alaska government ultimately makes, our commitment to our children's education will not waver. I urge you to protect parental rights, preserve true school choice, and ensure that families retain the freedom to choose the correspondence program that works best for their children.

Thank you for your time and consideration of this critical issue. And thank you for your testimony. We, uh, we do have one additional person signed up in the room, and that is, uh, Corky Abel. Whenever you're ready, you can begin your testimony and And you'll have 5 minutes.

My name is Courtney Abel, and we're a homeschooling family in Soldotna, Alaska. First, I want to say that I appreciate everything that the task force is doing for the education in Alaska. It is incredibly important. And I think that Alaska is such a unique state. There's all these different— we have villages, we have larger areas, we have Anchorage area, and I think the one thing that we have going for us is we get school choice.

Some places the homeschool community thrives based on— there's a lot of homeschoolers, and we have co-ops. In some places homeschool doesn't thrive, but a charter school thrives, and I think that is also incredibly beneficial. And then there is public school, which is so important. I'm not only a mother of homeschooling kids, I'm also a foster mom who has had children in a public school. And I can say with certainty that public school has saved multiple children.

I appreciate that. We chose to homeschool based on the different learning styles for our children. I have children, one in particular child, that we have had to switch and change his math curriculum a handful of times to make sure that he is learning, and that is not something that a public school or even a charter school is able to do. You can't just pick up a curriculum and drop a curriculum, and that is a unique thing that we have the privilege to do in homeschool is to be able to cultivate the curriculum to our children.

I have graduated 2 children out of a correspondence program in Alaska. My firstborn is— he scored fantastic on his SATs and is currently going to UAA for a business major. And my second, who education— Well, good for him. He's going to KPC right now, and he's working on getting a certificate to head to the North Slope and to stay in Alaska, which we really, really encourage all of our children to be able to stay in Alaska and use their education they have here to be able to bring it back to the community.

Homeschooling is— one of the other things that I really appreciate about homeschooling and the correspondence program that we have used is we do have— I am lost for words. We have to homeschool to a standard. We have individuals that are watching us, and encouraging us, and we have to submit and make sure that we are homeschooling to the standard of Alaska standards. And we appreciate our correspondence.

That's all I have. Thank you for your testimony. All right, I don't see anyone else in the room signed up to testify, so we will take just a brief at ease for the next 5 minutes. We'll come back online at 6 o'clock, and if there's no one else online, we will send it back to our folks in Anchorage to see what the next steps will be. So brief at ease.

Okay, thank you all for your patience. We are back online here at the Kenai LIO. We did have one additional person sign up for testimony. And again, reiterating that the queue for call-ins is now closed, but you are still welcome to come in in person at the Kenai LIO here on Main Street in Kenai. You can also email your public testimony to [email protected] if you have public testimony.

Um, we are joined by Danielle Hunter, and you will have 5 minutes for your public testimony, and you can begin whenever you're ready. Okay. Hi, I'm Danielle. Nice to meet you. So my daughter is Hayden.

She is 5 years old, and she just started kindergarten this fall. So we moved to Alaska in 2022, and one of the first things I started hearing about when I moved here was how many schools were getting shut down all the time. Moved to Anchorage, constantly schools getting shut down. Well, where do these kids go? So then we moved here to Kasilof, we bought a house, we were blessed enough to own a home, and literally months before my daughter started school, the closest elementary school got closed down.

They were number 2 in the state. And logic, It's why. So then, where I live is rural, we're out in the woods. I'm not driving my daughter super far to go to school. I'm not gonna make her get up at 5, 6 o'clock in the morning to attempt to catch a bus on a very, very busy road where it's 55 miles per hour.

But most people do along the lines of 70, I've seen it. Now, safety, early time. I grew up in Las Vegas and then graduated in Arizona. In Arizona. I went through a K through 13 in a very— K through 12 in a very rural area.

I had to go on a bus 1 hour each way. I will never do that to my child. There is one reason why I homeschool. Number 2, the statistics of this state is 49th. That is so, so, so, so sad.

Um, I'm very involved in my children's lives. I care about their education. I care about their future. I care about where they're going to be when they become adults. I do not want my daughter being 12, 13 years old and reading at a kindergarten level.

I find that very, very disturbing that there are parents who don't care, but they do exist. Um, I knew them growing up, but I know some now, and I will not allow that to happen. Um, judging homeschooling when you don't actually involve your life in it at all and have such strong opinion on it is Well, disingenuous. So allowing people to speak and hearing their testimony is very, very respectful and I appreciate that.

I think that it's important for people here in Alaska to be able to educate their children as they see fit. And I make sure my daughter stays along her curriculum. She's 5 years old, she's learning how to read. I will not allow my daughter to go lower.

So based on the fact that we live more rural, so many schools are getting shut down. Logically, besides money, I don't know why you would shut down the second best school in the state, but here we are. So where do we go from there? Teachers are overworked, classrooms are too full. Say there's a student that needs help, well, that student may not get that help because, well, there's 30, 40 kids in the school.

When I was in school, in elementary school in Las Vegas, we had outbuildings because we were so overpopulated. I remember not getting the attention that I needed. I had to get it at home. My parents still had to help with homework, still had to do work at home. Literally, a teacher will tell you in a public school that you need to be involved in your children's lives at home.

You need to help them with their homework. Homeschooling is literally that exact thing, but under a microscope. I do that all day long with my kid, and I would be doing it after school if they were in the public school in an actual building. I would be doing it anyways, so why not, why not just do it overall? I graduated high school a year early.

I have my associate's degree, and I pay attention, and I follow the program, and I feel very well that I am fit to teach my child, and I also have the ability to reach out to an actual teacher when I need help. I think that it depends on the parent, and putting all homeschoolers in a negative light is unnecessary. And so I think that we matter, our children's lives matter, and their futures matter. And that is all. Thank you for your testimony.

Thank you. All right. I don't see anyone else in the room ready to testify, so we are going to go once more to an at ease and see if we have anyone else ready to go in the room, and then we will be back in 5 minutes, just after 6:20. At ease.

Okay, so we are back online at the Kenai LIO. It's 6:28 on Thursday, November 12th, and there are no additional people signed up for in-room testimony. And at this moment, we do not have any additional people online to testify, so I am going to put ourselves on mute here, and then I'm going to I will send it back off to the Anchorage LIO, to Senator Tobin, I believe, who will, I think, wrap up our public testimony for this evening. We will be out at 6:28.

Thank you. Thank you, Representative Ruffridge. And I want to thank the folks at the Fairbanks LIO and also Senator Kiehl Rebecca Himschoot for all of your work today. This was a heavy lift, and I appreciate all of my task force members joining me here to listen to the robust public comments and feedback that we received on these draft recommendations. I just want to note once again that we have been joined by both my co-chair, Representative Himschoot, and Representative Ruffridge online for the entirety of the public testimony today.

We also have been joined on teams by Representative Story, and we have also been joined online by Senator Kiehl. We all have taken ample notes and received your comments and will continue to deliberate on the inclusion of those into the final report, which will be available on the first day of the 35th Legislature. We will then take public testimony again in Senate Education on that final report. So this is not your only opportunity to continue to provide feedback to the Task Force. Once again, we are in a 30-day public comment period on these draft recommendations that will end on December 8th.

We will continue to accept written comments. They can be emailed to [email protected]. That is [email protected].

Public comments we've received today, along with all written comments, will be used to further refine that task force. They will be available for folks to read. The written public testimony will be available on BASIS for additional inquiry of folks who are curious of what some colleagues are sending in or what additional information the task force has received. Once again, it is our official— it is our goal to submit the final report to the Alaska State Legislature on January 18th. The 2027 session will begin on January 19th.

And again, as I mentioned, on January 20th, it is our intent to hold public testimony on those final recommendations and the final report. I do want to thank everyone once again. We're looking here as there's no additional folks online. We are going to conclude public testimony so that we all are able to enjoy a piece of our evening. I will take— if any task force member has any final comments or would like to make any additional remarks, please raise your hand or wave to me and unmute yourself and you can do so.

Otherwise, we will have concluded for today. Looks like Rep Story. Rep Story, did you want to make any final comments? No? Thank you.

Well, thank you for joining us and being with us here for the entirety of our public testimony. Representative Edgmon. As there is no further business before the Joint Legislative Task Force on Education Funding, I'm going to adjourn us at 6:31 PM.