Since assuming office, Gov. Sean Parnell has consistently shown a willingness to support our state's children. His Safe Homes Strong Families initiative and the Alaska Performance Scholarship are both examples of this.
This support is now, however, in question with the recent announcement that his FY13 budget will not include an increase to the Base Student Allocation (BSA) portion of K-12 funding. Unfortunately, this is the same position he took last year.
Governor Parnell cites our state's students' relatively flat performance on the standards based assessment (SBA) as evidence that recent allocation increases have not had the intended effect. But, this perspective fails to consider the benefits our students have realized from increased funding.
Results of SBA tests are important but do not define how well a school is doing. Although I can't offer a statewide perspective, I can share how our nearly 9,000 students in the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District are benefiting from increases to K-12 funding.
Five years ago, the state Legislature directed a task force to review state funding of schools. It then made several recommendations. The most significant was a three-year funding plan that included an annual increase of $100 to the base allocation in the funding formula.
This forward funding was a welcome change that allowed districts to expand services to students. We used the new money to increase the number of intervention personnel working with our elementary students and added content teachers at the high school level. The Kenai district can now point to indicators that these changes had a positive impact.
All Kenai district schools provide interventions for our struggling learners in elementary school. Since teachers were added to help with these interventions, referrals for special education services for students with learning disabilities and/or emotional disturbances have decreased.
In addition, SBA test scores for these young students are also improving. In 2009 and 2010, students in grades 3-5 were the only grade level subgroup in our district to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). Last year, three years after the addition of interventionists, students in grades 3-5 and those in 6-8 both made AYP.
At the high school level, new content area teachers offer a more comprehensive high school experience, including more advanced placement and career technical education courses. The additional money, then, can be viewed as helping to increase Kenai district student achievement, save money with the avoidance of special education costs and better prepare our students for life after high school.
Unfortunately, the governor's proposed flat funding of education will cause some of these staffing additions to be eliminated.
Educators in Alaska welcome the scrutiny that is a part of receiving public funds. It is also fair for the public to expect that these funds lead to increased student learning.
I encourage the governor to rethink his position on education funding and feel that he should invite districts to share how the additional monies of the past years have helped improve students' academic performance. If there is no increase to the base student allocation next year, districts across Alaska will be forced to reduce services. Such a reduction will likely lead to a weaker student performance on the SBAs, which ironically was the governor's starting point for his thinking about why the funding should not increase.
Dr. Steve Atwater is superintendent of the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District.
By STEVE ATWATER