OPINION: Refocus on supporting our public schools

Alaska’s Superior Court recently struck down Alaska statutes that, for 10 years, enabled the use of public education funds for the purchase of education services and materials from private and/or religious organizations. Those provisions were found to be in direct conflict with Alaska’s Constitution: “No money shall be paid from public funds for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.”

The plain meaning of this language, bolstered by the history of the Alaska Constitution deliberations, provides robust support for the Superior Court’s decision.

Constitutional convention delegates met in Fairbanks between November 1955 and February 1956. Their deliberations regarding education — like the constitutional language they eventually ratified — were shaped by two things:

1. Longstanding territorial practices.

2. Seismic transformations in local and national education policy.

Publicly funded correspondence school programs in the territory had long provided financial support for textbooks, reference books, materials and tutoring across a wide range of subjects. These included language, music, art, reading, writing, math and science. Constitutional delegates wrote Constitutional language that did not preclude this practice as an inappropriate expenditure of public funds.

Meanwhile, the historic advocacy of Elizabeth Peratrovich led to the Alaska Anti-Discrimination Act in 1945. Nationally, in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court verdict of Brown v. Topeka Board of Education struck down the fiction of “separate but equal” educational systems that had been perpetuated by the Topeka Board of Education. Within this climate, the Alaska Constitution delegates proscribed that the Alaska Legislature shall maintain:

• a “system of public schools which shall be open to all children of the State” and

• those public schools “shall be free from sectarian control” and

•“No money shall be paid from public funds for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.”

Notably, the delegates voted down (34-19) an amendment to add “and indirect” to the last sentence. In that discussion, the delegates on the prevailing side cited programs such as free lunch, bus transportation and even state welfare agency payments for room and board for parentless children attending privately run schools as programs they did not want to exclude from public funding.

There is ample room to revise Alaska statutes to address correspondence school funding and reposition it squarely within the letter and intent of the Alaska Constitution. This would ensure that all students (correspondence and traditional) have access to a broad array of public educational services and opportunities, including online resources.

Both our governor and attorney general took an oath to uphold the Alaska Constitution. However, they propose to undermine it by ignoring key provisions, creating a no-strings-attached “educational dividend” and religious school scholarships. They have expressed an intent to appeal its prohibition against public funding of religious and private educational institutions to the U.S. Supreme Court. Rather than continuing to waste precious public funds on the governor’s vainglorious crusade against the plain meaning and intent of the Alaska Constitution, the Legislature (whose members also swear to uphold Alaska’s Constitution) should rewrite the correspondence school statutes to allow for the intended access to educational opportunities while not benefiting private educational institutions.

They can then resume a laser focus on investing in our public school system so that it attracts and retains the very best teachers that will, in turn, attract and retain families looking for the best education for their children. Collectively, we need to find the courage to make a serious commitment to sustained investments in our children’s future. If we do, we’ll rediscover that we can offer a wide range of robust educational opportunities for all our children — consistent with the letter and spirit of Alaska’s Constitution, the delegates who drafted it, the public who voted for it, and subsequent generations who have voted to keep it.

Mark Foster is a former Anchorage School District chief financial officer and School Board member.

Narda Butler is a co-founder of Frontier Charter School in Anchorage.

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