As many Alaska school districts grapple with steep budget deficits, and in the wake of Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s partial veto of an increase in the state’s per-student funding, the Legislature has launched a joint bipartisan task force to focus on education funding.

The Legislature approved a $700 increase per student to the base funding formula, but the governor vetoed more than $50 million in education-related money from the state budget, including a portion of the increase, pushing it down to $500 per student.

The veto meant a loss of more than $100,000 in revenue for the Wrangell school district.

Some lawmakers and education officials have expressed outrage and disappointment at the governor’s budget cuts, with leadership of both the House and Senate promising to hold a vote to override the budget veto to restore funding to schools in the first week of the January 2026 session.

In the meantime, the task force, created by House Bill 57, will look at a wide range of financial challenges and school policies. It’s charged with making recommendations before the Legislature convenes in January 2027.

“Is there a way by looking more globally at issues, that we can help contain some of those rising costs that districts have?,” task force co-chair Sitka Rep. Rebecca Himschoot said in a phone interview. “But the fact remains that we haven’t given a significant (state funding) increase to education in over 10 years.”

School funding has been at the heart of Alaska’s ongoing political and financial debates among Dunleavy and the Legislature — as well as school officials, families and municipalities — along with policy changes and how to improve students’ performance and learning outcomes.

In a short video released the day of the budget veto, Dunleavy cited declining state revenues and repeated his conviction that increasing education funding will not necessarily improve outcomes without policy changes.

The joint task force is set to start work in August, Himschoot said, and will not only look at how the state funds school districts, but also how it can address rising costs of transportation, energy, health insurance and school maintenance.

Himschoot said solutions will vary as widely as Alaska’s 54 school districts, and the task force can take time on issues not afforded during the legislative session.

“By doing this work during the interim over the next two years, it gives us time to ask questions, which often lead to more questions, and during the session, it can be very difficult, on a very tight timeline, and bring in all the different perspectives that need to be heard.”

The task force is planning to meet monthly and meetings will be open to the public, Himschoot said.

Tok Sen. Mike Cronk, a former teacher and representative for a large Interior district that includes nine school districts, said he sees participation from school officials as mandatory.

“I’ve already talked to numerous superintendents in my district, and I am going to require some of their input on certain things, because they’re the experts,” he said in a phone interview. “I don’t believe legislators … should be making these decisions. We need buy-in from everybody.”

Cronk said he wants the task force to create an ongoing, stable fiscal plan for funding schools. “We’re spinning our wheels. We just continue to not actually solve anything as a Legislature. We just prolong it to the next year, and the next year.”

Cronk said he understands the governor’s concerns but disagreed with his partial veto of the school funding increase.

The task force will also examine student performance and accountability measures, including absenteeism, as well as policy changes sought by the governor, like open enrollment, easing the application process for charter schools and reading incentive grants.

“It’s not just straight up, how do we fund better? It’s, ‘How do we make our education system better for all students?’ So that’s what I hope to focus on,” Cronk said.

Task force member Soldotna Rep. Justin Ruffridge said, “A task force is well suited to come out with some recommendations. … I think that we also need to discuss accountability measures, so things like testing, how we test, how we talk about testing … (and) open enrollment, how does that affect Alaska schools? How does it affect military bases? There’s a lot that we have to look at.”

Ruffridge said he’s also focused on teacher recruitment and retention, and incentives for local residents to become certified teachers. “Developing an apprenticeship track to be engaged with teachers and really growing some of our teachers in their homes and in their communities, I think, is a really good idea.”

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