OPINION: Simple tools Alaska legislators can use to fund education

On Wednesday, March 22, the House Education Committee advanced HB 65, a bill to increase the Base Student Allocation. As a teacher in rural Alaska, I am used to making the most of the resources at hand. However, our educational system is in dire need of funding. As reported by the ADN, from 2011 to 2022, the Base Student Allocation has increased by less than 5%, while Alaska’s urban consumer price index has risen by 24.6%.

If you are wondering what underfunded education looks like in Alaska, you need look no further than Brevig Mission School. Our school is overcrowded. Two classes are in portable buildings. These students must don winter gear and venture into temperatures well below zero whenever they need to return to the main school to use the bathroom. Another class of 20 students is crammed into a small room designed for video calls. Special education services often take place in the library and in a room that would be small even if it were only used only for its intended purpose as an office.

Over and over, we are told that there is no money for new school buildings or appropriate funding for our students, yet at the same time our state hands millions of dollars over to some of the world’s wealthiest corporations every year — the oil companies operating on the North Slope. For decades, these companies have shed crocodile tears, telling legislators, regulators and the public that they can only extract our oil when we provide them with tax credits, subsidies and other bonuses taken directly from state coffers. If you don’t pay us, they say, we will leave. Somehow, they expect Alaskans to ignore the massive profits that they take home each year.

These companies have robbed our state blind. It is time for them to take some responsibility and give back to the state that has given them so much. There are several simple measures that the Legislature can take this year to plug this leak in and keep the money in our state where it belongs. They are:

1. Decrease the per-barrel tax credit from $8 to $5, as recommended by the Department of Revenue. Doing this alone would make the state between $165 million and $330 million annually over the next five years, more than enough to pay for increasing the base student allocation statewide.

2. Implement a 25% windfall profit tax that would cap the amount of profit fossil-fuel companies are making as they are experiencing record profits at a time when Alaskans are paying record energy bills.

3. Expand the corporate income tax to include all oil or gas business entities – specifically to capture limited liability companies like Hilcorp and Harvest that currently do not pay state corporate income tax whatsoever.

Our children are our most important resource. We have the tools to adequately fund their education, if we have the courage to use them.

Rebecca Siegel is a teacher at Brevig Mission School in Brevig Mission, a community northwest of Nome on Alaska’s Seward Peninsula.

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