AKLEG Day 38: Silence

Members of the House Minority pitched various levels of an increase to the BSA and every single one was voted down by Republicans in the House Majority.

Good morning, Alaska. It’s Thursday.

In this edition: The House pushed ahead with the education bill on Wednesday, failing two procedural motions that effectively put an end to both the far-ranging omnibus and another version that increased baseline school funding. It leaves the House with the Senate version of the bill to amend on the floor, a process that got underway yesterday with House Republicans voting down every attempt to increase the base student allocation. Things are still in flux, but it’s not a promising start.

Current mood: 🌬️

Silence

The House vote on an amendment for a $680 increase to the BSA.

The sweeping omnibus education proposal devised by House Republicans and backed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy (who has more than once called it “our bill”) is dead, at least for now. Two days and several closed-door meetings between the House Republicans, dissenting Majority members and the House Minority have not changed any minds, and Monday’s failed vote to adopt the omnibus as the working version of Senate Bill 140 stood on Wednesday. Along with a failed vote to adopt House Finance’s version of Senate Bill 140—which included a $680 increase to the base student allocation—the legislation is left as the one-paragraph bill sent over by the Senate to increase internet speeds in remote schools.

The entirety of Senate Bill 140 as it currently stands.

That’s far from the end of the road for the legislation, which is now subject to the floor amendment process. But Wednesday’s votes weren’t particularly promising.

In a series of amendments, members of the House Minority pitched various levels of an increase to the BSA ranging from $680 all the way up to $1,800—about $400 more than what educators say is needed to keep up with inflation—and every single one was voted down by Republicans in the House Majority.

While members of the House Minority and even some of the non-Republican members of the Majority offered impassioned calls to increase funding for schools that cited increasingly dire conditions in public schools across the state, not a single Majority Republican spoke to defend or explain their votes last night. This comes after Republicans cried that they were being canceled on Monday when their omnibus bill appeared doomed.

“People who have advocated for this have been characterized as an angry mob and as a special interest group, but what I see when I look in our classrooms are amazing Alaskans,” said Fairbanks Democratic Rep. Ashley Carrick of her amendment to increase the BSA by $1,413, the figure requested by educators. “I see amazing teachers making the best with minimal resources. I see administrators making hard decisions about what, where and when to cut, even when they don’t have any more fat to trim. I see students who are still learning and excelling post-COVID, somehow beating the odds in classrooms of 25 to 30 students. We cannot support our students, parents, teachers and families without supporting education funding.”

Other legislators highlighted short-staffed school districts that have gone without nurses or counselors, leaving teachers with the impossible task of juggling the needs of students in crisis with teaching. Sitka independent Rep. Rebecca Himschoot, a newly retired elementary school teacher, talked in great detail about the problems kids face at home and bring to the classroom. Once, she said, there were enough counselors that they could help students whose parents were divorcing, but now they don’t even get heard as the remaining staff rush from crisis to crisis.

Quoting education historian Diane Ravitch, she argued, “Our schools are not in crisis any more than our society is in crisis” and that supporting schools is one way to help those kids and their families, offering them stability in an uncertain time.

As I noted, those appeals were met with silence from the House Majority’s 20 Republican members who, along with caucus-less Wasilla Republican Rep. David Eastman, voted down every amendment on a 21N-19Y margin.

Education Committee co-chair Rep. Justin Ruffridge, the Soldotna Republican who originally devised the $680 BSA increase because it met the needs of Kenai schools, eventually did speak but only to oppose a series of amendments offered by Anchorage Democratic Rep. Andy Josephson that were aimed at home schools. The measures that would have required them to participate in state testing—when home school opt-out rates are north of 80%—and report how allocations are being spent were unfair, Ruffridge said, and inappropriate in a bill that doesn’t deal with home schools.

The measures also failed on a 21N-19Y margin.

The House eventually adjourned around 10:30 p.m., leaving the bill open to further amendments.

That means provisions from the omnibus, such as the expansion of charter schools, increased funding for home school students, the governor’s controversial teacher bonus program and even a BSA increase, could still be approved via amendment. While some of those changes could be accomplished with a 21-vote majority, such changes will likely require a title change for the bill, which means that 27 votes will ultimately be needed to sign off on any changes made to the bill.

The House is set to return today at 11 a.m.

Follow the thread: The House begins the amendment process on the education bill

Some important background

There’s been a lot of chatter about dealmaking between the House Majority, the House Minority and the governor on a bill that would include an increase to the BSA and some smattering of other education policies. None have proven fruitful yet, and I think this comment from Sen. Löki Tobin, the Senate’s Education Committee chair leading negotiations for much of the legislative session, is particularly illuminating about why little progress has been made.

“It has been made abundantly clear that the House majority is not a binding caucus, which means it’s difficult to have any level of negotiations,” Tobin told the ADN on Monday. She said the House majority caucus determined it would “continue forward without negotiating further.”

“We worked on policy, but we never really came down to the nitty-gritty of saying ‘this is the language that will be introduced,’” said Tobin.

Stay tuned.