If you boil the debate about school funding down to its essence, it is a pretty simple discussion. It all comes down to declining student numbers and a legislature that wants to maintain the status quo, without looking for meaningful alternatives to educate Alaskan kids.

The problem’s essence is that fewer Alaska students are attending brick-and-mortar schools today than before the Covid pandemic. About 20% of today’s student population in Alaska has left public school for homeschool. Combine that with our state’s relatively flat total student population over the past 10 years, and you have a situation where schools are trying to deliver the same services to 20% fewer students.

Despite the lack of innovation in conventional schools, our legislators have decided to keep giving them more and more money for the same old thing.

Every child who leaves “regular” school forces the costs of operating the facility to be shared among the remaining kids, increasing the cost per student. That is why the education establishment wants the Base Student Allotment (BSA) to be increased. They are trying to preserve an existing way of teaching kids despite having fewer of them to teach.

I experienced a similar situation as an engineer on the North Slope in the early 80s. Our company was the only one providing a type of technical service to the oil companies on the slope, and we thought we did a pretty good job. A few years later, a competitor started operations and delivered the same product for a cheaper cost than my employer did. The company I worked for lost business and, as a consequence, was forced to adapt. We learned better ways of working so we could compete.

One thing we didn’t do was ask the companies that employed us to pay more money for less work. If we had attempted something like that, we would have lost all of their business, and deservedly so. Competition was hard, but it made us a better company.

When put in a similar situation, the public school system has not sufficiently adapted to the challenges it faces with declining enrollment. They want to keep doing things the same way they always have and are asking for more and more money to do so. However, the attendance numbers don’t lie. The decline in public school attendance indicates that parents want better alternatives to educate their kids than what conventional schools provide, and are taking their kids elsewhere.

Having had three children attend public school in Homer, I know this is true. Most of the teachers were great, but not all of them. When one of my kids got a poor teacher, we were stuck with the situation for the remainder of the school year, and my kid’s education suffered.

In 2021, during the Covid pandemic, my youngest child began homeschooling. We discovered that she could get a much better education in homeschool, and if issues arose, we were able to fix the situation. After the pandemic ended, her homeschool experience was so good that we did not return to regular public school.

Despite the lack of innovation in conventional schools, our legislators have decided to keep giving them more and more money for the same old thing. That is the wrong way to address the issue. Alaska’s schools do not need a BSA increase. They need to figure out new ways of educating kids that will deliver excellence at a lower cost. Revive Academy is a private school featured in a recent article and is an example of what public schools should strive for. It will provide a better education with a smaller class size and charge less money. Home and charter schools also offer much more cost-effective education than conventional public schools.

These new systems of education are competition for public schools. My work experience on the North Slope demonstrated that competition makes you better. If public schools can’t compete, then why should we continue to pay ever-increasing costs for an education system that doesn’t deliver excellence to our children?

LEARN MORE

— To see annual student enrollment in Alaska from 1988 to present, click this link.

— Next, select this link for the Average Daily Membership by Districts FY88 – FY24 (xlsx)

The views expressed here are those of Greg Sarber. Read more Sarber posts at his Seward’s Folly substack.

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