In an effort to sway voters into backing hard-leftist Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, the Alaska Democratic Party is now openly attacking the three GOP candidates for daring to support school-choice alternatives such as homeschooling and private and religious education options.
In a Oct. 2 email blast, Alaska Democratic Party Chair Eric Croft claims Bernadette Wilson, Dave Bronson and Treg Taylor want to “gut Alaska public schools,” simply because they favor giving parents greater freedoms to send their children to alternatives to the state’s chronically failing government-run schools.
“Bernadette Wilson, Dave Bronson, and Treg Taylor want to divert money from Alaska public schools to private schools,” the Democrat message claims. “Their plan to ‘fix’ Alaska schools is to slash education funding and send taxpayer money to private schools.”
In reality, the GOP candidates have stated that they want to provide real, viable alternatives to Alaskans, including robust support for the state-funded homeschooling options and more support for families that choose private or religious education for their children.
The Republicans have also repeatedly pointed out that government-run schools need to be held accountable for the fact that the vast majority of their students in Alaska cannot read or do math at grade level – a chronic problem that has persisted for decades.
Rather than foster competition and alternatives, Democrats and their supporters in the NEA teachers’ union have demanded millions more in funding while actively blocking accountability measures.
The latest email from the Democratic Party claims Kreiss-Tomkins will oppose school-choice options that Gov. Mike Dunleavy has supported during his tenure and warns that the Republican candidates actually agree with Dunleavy’s efforts to encourage alternative educational models.
The email blast makes no mention of the fact that homeschooling and private education have surged over the last few years, with 23,000 children now enrolled in the increasingly popular state-funded correspondence programs and tens of thousands more now attend non-public school settings.
Additionally, the Democratic messaging does not mention the fact that Kreiss-Tomkins favors radical notions such as letting gender-confused males compete in girls sports and allowing boys to use locker rooms and bathrooms that are designated for biological girls.
