The unserious leftists in control of the Alaska Legislature sent a message to the Alaska voters that was loud and clear. The legislature doesn’t care about actually improving public school education in Alaska. Their only concern is spending more of your money to pander to the education lobby. That is the conclusion that can be drawn from the special session of the legislature the governor called for this past weekend.

The governor recognized that the state faces critical challenges with how we educate our children and pay for it. In the last regular legislative session, this issue was controversial, and demonstrating leadership, the governor called a special session to allow the legislature to focus on this one issue. He also submitted bills for consideration that could have provided new solutions to some of the challenges. If the Democrat majority caucuses running our legislature had worked with the governor, real progress could have been made. Unfortunately, that did not happen.

Instead, Democrats and their Vichy Republican collaborators chose to support the education lobby instead of the voter. The special session convened on Saturday at 1 p.m., and they quickly voted to override the governor’s veto of education funding. Then, after spending tens of millions of dollars that the state hadn’t budgeted, they used parliamentary chicanery to adjourn the special session on the very same day.

The ironic thing is that voters on both sides of this issue want the same thing: quality education for Alaska’s children. Conservative Republicans in the minority even acknowledge that our state requires unique solutions due to the small population size and vast geographic area of our state. The primary difference lies in how the different factions envision solving the problems.

The current Democrat majority and their collaborators believe the only way forward is to keep spending money on an expensive and inadequate system. Like liberals everywhere, they think that if we just spend enough, it will solve the problem. They fail to grasp the unfortunate reality that, according to the most recent report card from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Alaska students rank next to last in measurable educational progress. Our kids in Alaska perform worse than those in every other state in the Union, except one.

At the same time, according to the Education Data Initiative, our costs per student are among the highest in the nation. Any regular business that provided terrible service at an exorbitant price would quickly go out of business. Yet, on Saturday, the Democrats and Vichy Republicans attempted to do just that. They saddled Alaskans with paying ever more money for continually declining school performance.

There are solutions to these issues. There are educational systems that are both more cost-effective and deliver better results. The governor’s bills proposed some of these ideas, and conservatives have been advocating for them for years. They include promoting homeschooling, remote learning via the internet, charter/private schools, and educational vouchers that follow the student. These ideas are all less costly and provide better results than conventional schooling options. However, these ideas have been met with universal opposition from the Democrat led legislature, perhaps because they are a threat to the teacher’s union, and Democrat and RINO legislators receive campaign funding from the NEA Alaska.

You have to ask yourself why supporters of this weekend’s actions would intentionally want to spend more for worse education for our children.

One group down here in Homer was overjoyed with the results of the special session. Supporters of the legislature’s spending increase gathered together yesterday on a street corner to celebrate their political victory. You have to wonder how many members of the crowd were also members of the teacher’s union and financially benefited from the legislature’s action. This spending increase may have preserved their jobs, but their joy may be short-lived. The only way to pay for it will be to take away even more of the public’s annual PFD check. When that kicks in next year, the citizens in Alaska who rely on the PFD to pay their bills may not share in the joy. In next year’s election, Alaskans unhappy about sacrificing their PFD on the altar of liberalism will have the opportunity to choose new legislators who are not willing to be a puppet of NEA Alaska.

Every Democrat in the Alaska Legislature, along with the Republicans who voted for this profligate spending increase, should be voted out of office. The Democrats are a lost cause, but the RINOs at least pretend to be fiscally conservative to get elected, and deserve special attention for their hypocrisy.

The following is the list of RINOs who supported the Democrats – Representatives Jeremy Bynum, Bill Elam, Chuck Kopp, David Nelson, Justin Ruffridge, Dan Saddler, Will Stapp, Julie Coulombe, and Louise Stutes, along with Senators Rob Yundt, Mike Cronk, James Kaufman, Cathy Giessel, Jesse Bjorkman, Kelly Merrick, Bert Stedman, and Gary Stevens.

It required 45 votes to override the governor’s veto in a joint House and Senate special session. There were exactly 45 votes on Saturday. Each of these RINOs who joined with the Democrats to override the governor’s veto was effectively the 45th vote. Instead of working on real solutions, they chose to pander to the teachers’ unions. Each of these individuals should have Republican challengers in next year’s primary, and their challengers must remind the voters that one vote could have made a big difference.

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

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