Forty-three students in a high school math class in Ketchikan, 36 in middle school science in Juneau, and crowded classrooms with fewer resources across Metlakatla, Sitka, Petersburg and Wrangell. As teachers in Southeast Alaska, these are the classrooms we walked into at the start of this school year.

After years of state neglect, our schools are facing unprecedented conditions. Our communities support public education, but the lack of state investment is at the root of our educational challenges.

Across Southeast, this crisis extends far beyond rising class sizes.

In Sitka, recent budget cuts forced the elimination of certified teaching positions, directly reducing specialized high school electives and advanced coursework.

In Petersburg and Wrangell, districts have been pushed to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars from emergency reserves just to preserve basic staffing.

Ketchikan is cutting support staff, vocational programs and activity funding.

In Juneau, massive structural deficits led to school closures and campus consolidations, while rural and island districts like Metlakatla have been forced to freeze essential student services and extracurricular activities. 

As teachers, we cannot provide individual attention, address complex learning needs or foster real academic depth when the support systems around us are crumbling.

Our districts are constantly forced to shift educators from school to school just to plug critical holes. Every year brings new turmoil and chaos, driven by flat state funding and the worst teacher retirement system in the United States for anyone hired after June 2006 — a system with no Social Security or pension that drives away qualified professionals. Alaska’s teachers are facing more challenging conditions and less compensation every year, leading to instability for our students. 

The state has a constitutional obligation to provide adequate education, an obligation it has failed to uphold. When schools are forced into continuous crisis management, young families leave, professionals think twice about moving here and our communities suffer. 

We need leadership in Juneau that understands our communities and recognizes that strong public schools are non-negotiable. That is why electing Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins as governor is so urgent. Having represented Southeast in the Legislature for a decade, Kreiss-Tomkins knows what our communities and rural school districts are up against. 

He is committed to the tools our schools need to recover, including forward-funding education and establishing statutory funding increases so districts can hire enough educators to bring class sizes down to manageable levels. That would end the annual spring panic of potential layoffs and budget cuts, allowing school boards and administrators to focus on education rather than survival.

He supports passing a defined-benefit retirement system that gives valuable educators a reason to build lifelong careers in Alaska.

We cannot continue down a path where stripped-down schools are accepted as normal. Rebuilding our schools and restoring stability starts this November by electing Kreiss-Tomkins.

Cheyenne Cuellar, of Juneau

Owen Fulton, of Metlakatla

David Mitchel, of Ketchikan

Tim Shumway, of Petersburg

Holly Owens-Padilla and

Heather Howe, of Wrangell

Mike Vieira and Ariel Starbuck, of Sitka