OPINION: House Republicans put IGNITE program at risk

House Republicans recently voted to uphold Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of SB 140. As a result, thousands of Anchorage students and their families now face an unclear future. Without the additional funds for classroom instruction that SB 140 would have provided — and without any clear path to increase education funding before the end of this legislative session, it appears likely that local students will face increased class sizes, the loss of elective opportunities in high schools, reduced immersion program staffing and the elimination of ASD’s IGNITE program.

Although each of these opportunities is important, we are writing today to advocate for IGNITE on a state level, since the Anchorage School Board and the Anchorage Assembly have done their parts to support the program’s continuation.

IGNITE is a school-based program serving the complex needs of 2,193 gifted elementary students across ASD. These high-achieving students are taught by teachers who have met the state’s requirement for credits in gifted education. IGNITE classrooms, in turn, support students’ growth and engagement by providing opportunities to work and collaborate at an advanced academic level. IGNITE programming supports students’ critical thinking and organizational skills, their affective skills and their problem-solving skills. Rather than being told to look for specific answers, IGNITE students explore ways to think, learn, analyze and discuss. IGNITE offers our children opportunities to expand their minds in new ways that can’t be replicated outside the IGNITE classroom. Our kids look forward to IGNITE days, and testimony by IGNITE teachers indicated that in a school district with a high rate of absenteeism, IGNITE keeps students attending school. IGNITE is the kind of program that will help Alaska produce the next generation of leaders we need to foster innovation and fuel development.

Since the 2021-22 school year, all second graders have been screened for IGNITE. Students qualify based on a comprehensive point system that encompasses ability and achievement tests, class performance, teacher scoring of learning, and analysis of a student’s motivational characteristics. All test scores are locally normed districtwide and district normed for Title I, English Language Learners, and economically disadvantaged. The system thus increasingly identifies students in a way that is reflective of the ASD elementary population as a whole. As a result, rates of qualification for IGNITE at our Title 1 schools are in some cases quadrupling prior rates.

Although IGNITE was nearly eliminated for the 2020-2021 school year, four years of savings and COVID relief funds enabled ASD to maintain the valuable program, even though ASD’s structural deficit grew throughout this time. But because one-time federal relief funds will be unavailable after September 2024, a statutory increase to the base student allocation is now the only mechanism that ASD foresees as enabling the district to maintain IGNITE for the 2024-25 school year and beyond.

Because IGNITE serves students in their neighborhood schools across the municipality, the average State House legislator has 150-225 IGNITE kids in each of their districts. There are 205 IGNITE students are enrolled in the schools whose boundaries fall into the district represented by Rep. Julie Coulombe (R-Anchorage), for example, while 256 IGNITE students are enrolled in the schools whose boundaries lie within the district represented by Rep. Tom McKay (R-Anchorage). Both representatives voted against overriding the veto in order to increase education funding.

But in the recent joint session in which the legislature’s attempt to override Dunleavy’s veto fell short by a single vote, Coulombe and McKay each voted to kill the education bill. If either Coulombe or McKay had voted “yes” on the override, the Legislature would have enshrined a larger BSA in statute and programs like IGNITE would have been much safer. Instead, they sacrificed students in their own district to curry favor with the governor. Now, ASD’s IGNITE and language immersion programs are at risk.

Alaska has suffered from a decade of outmigration as inflation has eroded the value of the state’s investment in education. Right now our employers can only fill one out of every two jobs. We believe that our underfunded education system is the primary reason for outmigration and associated labor shortages.

If legislators want to accelerate outmigration and economic decline, the single most effective way to do that would be to withhold school funding and eliminate some of the main programs that keep families in Anchorage and Alaska. A different vision for economic growth, however, would say that it is time to reverse course and raise the BSA this year. As voters, we need to fire those who have opposed education funding and replace them with representatives who will support our schools.

Namory Bagayoko, Kerry Brown, Nazly Mofidi, Dale Munger and Rachel Parrish, Miriam Roberts and Matthew Ubedei are parents of IGNITE students.

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