Students and school officials from across Alaska — as geographically diverse as from the North Slope, Yukon Flats, Yakutat and Hoonah — visited the Legislature to make an annual plea to lawmakers to invest in the state’s public education.
“I have been in this building every February for 20 years, and for 20 years I have been saying nearly the same exact thing, and we’re at a point now where that conversation is at an inflection point,” said Lon Garrison, executive director of the Association of Alaska School Boards, which organized the annual fly-in event on Feb. 9.
“Pretty soon, public education will not work in the state of Alaska,” he said. “And we have to do something. We have to be bold.”
Decades of deferred maintenance for Alaska’s schools is reaching crisis levels, lawmakers heard, with some districts grappling with deteriorating school buildings, failing water and sewer systems.
Alaska’s school maintenance problems are well-known, but the schools’ needs come with a multimillion-dollar price tag. Lawmakers will be negotiating this session how much to allocate to schools among a slate of other state funding needs, from transportation to increased disaster relief funding.
That negotiation is further complicated by declining oil prices and state revenues — and the threat of Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto pen.
But on Feb. 9, students and school board members, some parents themselves, shared emotional testimony of how schools continue to endure failing infrastructure.
“Some of our schools are so riddled with black mold that I developed a headache almost immediately,” said Julia Phelen, a member of the school board with the Delta-Greely School District, on visiting rural schools in the Delta Junction area district. “Some of them have only one working restroom in the entire building, and others are hauling water and using honey buckets.”
Last year, the Legislature approved $38 million to address school repairs and rebuilds on the state’s major maintenance list, a ranking of school projects submitted to the state for reimbursement. That was enough to cover the top nine projects on the list. Dunleavy vetoed that down to roughly $12.8 million, citing declining oil prices and state revenues, to fund the top three projects on the list.
Wrangell was fortunate in 2024 when the Legislature appropriated more than $62 million to reach far down the list of major maintenance projects at schools around the state. The money included $6.5 million for roof, siding, foundation work and other repairs at Wrangell’s three schools.
The $62 million was the largest such appropriation in more than a decade.
This year, whether lawmakers will allocate more funding for public education remains uncertain amid early budget negotiations.
But leaders in the bipartisan Senate Majority Caucus expressed support for addressing more of schools’ major facilities needs at a news conference on Feb. 10.
“Now this year, we’ve got $401 million on the deferred maintenance list of schools,” said Sitka Sen. Bert Stedman, a member of the Senate Finance Committee. “We need to have a dialogue with the administration and try to get them to work with us so we can slow down this deferred maintenance. Because every year doesn’t get addressed, it just gets worse.”
The deteriorating school facilities are coupled with stretched budgets — some districts face steep budget shortfalls and school closures — and rising costs, especially for rural districts. Some speakers said budget shortfalls are forcing districts to cut classes, teachers and activities, which they said is posing a growing risk to students’ safety and well-being, including mental health.
Reanna Brown, a school board member from Yakutat, testified that in rural communities like hers, accessible only by boat and plane, the costs of education are higher, from retaining teachers to powering buildings and transporting supplies.
“Our students deserve the same opportunities as any student in Alaska, regardless of their ZIP code,” Brown said. “Stable, equitable education funding allows us to retain quality educators, support student services and provide safe, consistent learning environments.”
“Every day we see the impact of not having enough resources for our education,” said Melina Pangiak, who testified with a classmate, Lucia Patrick, from the Chevak school in the Kashunamiut School District in Western Alaska.
The students spoke about the cuts to elective classes and learning opportunities. “Elective classes are more than just extra courses. They are where we discover what excites us and where we find talents and when we could discover our future paths,” Pangiak said.
“When these classes are cut or limited, it feels like doors are being closed on our potential,” Patrick added.
Students and school officials testified that there is a growing need for more school counselors and resources for mental health support.
“Our region recently experienced another suicide, which deeply affected our students and our only regional counselor,” said Kay Andrews, a school board member from the Southwest Region School District that includes eight schools spanning across the Bristol Bay region.
“Schools are more than our classrooms. They are community centers. They are safe places for our children, yet schools are being asked to do more with less,” she said.
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