Article VII of the Alaska Constitution requires the Legislature to “maintain a system of public schools open to all children of the state.” Alaska statute, in the Alaska Students’ Educational Bill of Rights, states: “A quality education for students of all ages is a concrete investment that vastly improves the future prosperity, welfare, productivity and vitality of society.”
The indisputable, mathematical fact is that at least for the past 10 years; (years in which I served in the Alaska State House), the Legislature and the executive branch have failed in this constitutional obligation.
It’s a fact that the Base Student Allocation (BSA), the foundation of the state’s funding formula, has not been meaningfully increased since 2012, hindering the education of our future Alaska workforce.
When you factor in the impact of inflation over those years, the spending power of the state allocation to “adequately provide” for each Alaska child attending public schools has been reduced by nearly 40%. Have we collectively arrived at the conclusion that we value our students’ education 40% less than we did for those students who attended our schools more than a decade ago?
As part of the funding formula, when we increase the BSA we are adding support to all school options in Alaska: charter, homeschool and neighborhood schools.
Since 2012 there has been a bill in each Legislature, including bills I sponsored, to increase the BSA. Our state’s education funding practices are failing to prevent inflation from taking away our children’s educational opportunities. We have all seen what this means: school closures, loss of activities, electives and other opportunities that Alaskans have come to expect from their schools.
The 2025 legislative session has passed the halfway mark of its regular session. The Legislature’s primary responsibility is to pass the budget bills to the governor for his signature. The challenge all legislatures face is allocating limited revenue to meet the nearly limitless funding requests. Alaskans want their schools paid for, but they also want their roads paved, the state ferries to run, and the capital projects in their districts to get funded.
They also like as large a Permanent Fund dividend as possible. They (including me) would rather not pay money out of their own pockets in the form of taxes to pay for all these wants.
The desire to meet this year’s list of wants has been made even more problematic by the fact that the state’s revenue to meet these demands is projected to decrease.
Despite those fiscal complications, 24 of the 40 members of the House passed House Bill 69, which provides for a $1,000 increase to the BSA. While this amount still falls significantly short of fully catching up with the impact of inflation, a majority vote of support from the Senate will be a big step toward the Legislature living up to the constitutional requirement that the Legislature provide for our students’ educational needs.
Is it a politically easy vote for legislators to make? No, not when you consider all the other demands for state spending that are out there. However, while it’s not easy, it is the right thing to do for the future of our state and our kids.
Dan Ortiz, Ketchikan
Former District 1 State Representative
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