Local education administrators and state officials at odds over how to fund Alaska’s schools

A school bus full of preschoolers, their parents, caregivers and advocates pulled up to the Capitol building on Monday to hand out Valentine’s Day cards to state legislators on Feb. 13, 2023.

Lisa Parady, executive director for the Alaska Council of School Administrators, painted legislators a dire picture of hiring and retention woes. Department of Labor“We are struggling in the worst crisis Alaska has ever seen in terms of turnover. We can’t recruit teachers. Fundamentally, that’s very important to high quality instruction,” she said. “This is an emergency at a level that we have never seen before in Alaska.

“I think that we’re all walking toward the cliff. Some are already there. But we’re all on the way,” he said. Sen. Jesse Bjorkman, a Nikiski Republican and teacher, said that to keep districts from making cuts and taking educational opportunities away from kids, the BSA increase needs to be more than $680.

Senator Jesse Bjorkman, R-Nikiski, asks education administrators to explain what is at stake for students if the base student allocation does not increase on January 5, 2024. Instead, Bishop said she would like to see other changes to the funding formula. This would be done through either an increase in or the addition of new factors in the formula. These factors, known as “multipliers,” are adjustments to the BSA. Examples of theinclude the size of schools and the number of students with special needs. They act as levers that drive the amount of money each district gets.

Source: Education Headlines (educationheadlines.net)

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