Some Alaska lawmakers signal opposition to governor’s pick for education board

Some Alaska senators signaled Monday that they would oppose the re-confirmation of a member of the state board of education over his positions on public education, including his support for spending state funds on private schools.

Bob Griffin was first appointed to the Alaska Board of Education and Early Development in 2019 by Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy. Griffin is a commercial airline pilot, a retired Air Force pilot and a researcher with the Alaska Policy Forum, a conservative group that has advocated for directing public funds to private and religious schools.

Griffin was appointed by Dunleavy earlier this year to another five-year term on the state education board, subject to the Legislature’s approval. Lawmakers are set to vote next week on whether to confirm Griffin, along with the governor’s other appointees to public boards and commissions.

The state board of education is responsible for formulating and implementing statewide education regulations. Its members are appointed by the governor. Two other board members are up for confirmation this year — Barbara Tyndall and Pamela Dupras. One seat on the board remains vacant.

In a Senate Education Committee hearing, Griffin reiterated his support for a correspondence allotment program that earlier this month was found by an Anchorage Superior Court judge to violate the state constitution, which prohibits the use of public dollars to benefit private schools. The allotments, initially intended to fund students’ individual learning plans, were increasingly used by families to subsidize private school tuition.

Members of the Senate Education Committee on Monday appeared skeptical of Griffin’s support for pieces of Dunleavy’s agenda, including the governor’s proposal to empower the state board of education to approve new charter schools — a power currently reserved for locally elected school boards.

Dunleavy vetoed an education bill earlier this year that would have increased per-student spending on education, saying he disapproved of the bill because it did not include his desired new method for approving charter schools. Griffin told Senate members on Monday that he supported Dunleavy’s veto, and had lobbied lawmakers after the veto not to override it. The attempt to override Dunleavy’s veto failed by a single vote, with 39 out of 60 lawmakers voting to override the governor. Originally, 56 lawmakers had voted in favor of the bill’s passage.

“I think the governor was correct in that the package was light on reforms,” Griffin told Senate members. “I encouraged members … to sustain the veto because I think the governor was correct in that we’ve gone down the road of increasing spending without meaningful reforms for an awful long time.”

Senate Education Committee Chair Löki Tobin, an Anchorage Democrat, said she would vote against Griffin’s confirmation, in part because of his effort to lobby lawmakers, and would encourage other lawmakers not to confirm Griffin.

“I hear you talking about lobbying legislators, which I think gets very close to violating the Executive Branch Ethics Act,” said Tobin.

The act prohibits board members from lobbying, if they are paid to do so.

Tobin also called into question the research that Griffin has used to argue in favor of supporting charter and correspondence programs, and his support for empowering the state board of education to approve new charter schools.

“Hundreds of millions of dollars have gone out of the public funds into the private hands during your tenure on the state board of education,” said Tobin.

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At the time when Griffin was appointed to the state board of education in 2019, Dunleavy also removed from the board Rebecca Himschoot, a Sitka teacher whose term was not set to expire until 2021.

Himschoot, who was elected to the state House in 2022 as an independent and now serves on the House Education Committee, asked pointed questions about Griffin’s claims during a House Education hearing earlier this month, including his assertions that correspondence students are broadly successful. Less than 20% of them participate in statewide testing, making it difficult for education officials to gauge the students’ success.

Loren Leman, a Republican former lieutenant governor, called into the House Education Committee to speak in favor of Griffin’s re-confirmation. He said Griffin has “a willingness to challenge the status quo.”

Several public school advocates spoke in opposition to Griffin’s confirmation, including Caroline Storm, executive director of the Coalition for Education Equity, which has advocated for increasing public school funding. She said Griffin’s “drive to expand charters is not a solution in remote and rural Alaska.”

Immediately prior to being appointed to the board, Griffin served as treasurer an independent expenditure group that spent millions campaigning for Dunleavy. In 2011, Griffin ran unsuccessfully for the Anchorage School Board, losing to incumbent Pat Higgins.