The Governor's Task Force on Childcare needs your input by tonight.
Increasing the Base Student Allocation (BSA) will give Alaska's school districts the resources they need to improve public education in Alaska, including teacher pay.
Right now, there are too few options for childcare in Alaska, and the cost is just too dang high for working families, and as a result, too many parents are forced out of the workforce. There are still a great many missing workers who never returned to the workforce in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic because they had to continue to provide full-time care for their children.
During the FY 24 budget negotiations, the Senate Majority added $15 million to stabilize the childcare sector, which unfortunately was reduced to $7.5 million. The good news is that Alaska’s childcare resource and referral organization, thread, has been called in to help deploy those desperately needed resources. Applications are being accepted through January 7, 2024.
The lack of affordable childcare options in Alaska resulted in Governor Dunleavy putting together a Task Force on Childcare with a mission to develop a plan to improve the availability and affordability of quality childcare throughout Alaska. I was appointed to the Task Force as an ex-officio member, which means I can participate in meetings but I don’t get to vote on what is or is not included in the Task Force recommendations and reports. The Governor’s Task Force on Childcare includes childcare providers, business leaders, healthcare experts, and other stakeholders who are working to make some informed recommendations to address what many, myself included, call a crisis in childcare.
To date, the Governor’s Task Force on Childcare has met 12 times and heard numerous presentations from experts and stakeholders involved in childcare nationally and here in Alaska. In September, the Task Force took public comments to hear firsthand the challenges faced by parents and childcare providers. In October, the Task Force heard from the University of Alaska about the efforts to train an early education and childcare workforce and earlier this month the Task Force received detailed briefings from the federal Office of Childcare and the General Services Administration.
The initial report from the Task Force on Childcare is due to Governor Dunleavy by the end of the year and the first iteration of the Task Force’s recommendations has been released for public comment. Please take a moment to review the recommendations and provide feedback.
The Governor’s Task Force on Childcare is accepting public comments until 7:30 tonight. In addition to written public comments, the Task Force will take public comments during an online meeting tonight from 5:30 to 7:30 pm.
A BSA increase will allow schools to increase teacher pay.
Here is the harsh reality: your local school probably does not have enough teachers and is relying on substitutes to fill the gap. In late October, the Alaska Council of School Administrators reported there were 507 first-day vacancies for certified staff for the 2023-2024 school year, an increase of more than 100 vacant positions when compared to the start of the previous school year. The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development (DEED) reported that as of September 21, there were 107 special education teacher vacancies across Alaska. In Anchorage, the school district reported 140 certified staff vacancies at the start of the school year.
Why are there so many teacher vacancies in Alaska? I think it is important to recognize that there is a national shortage of teachers and other qualified educators. The COVID-19 pandemic certainly played a role in the shortage, but I think the demonization of educators and continued threats to educators by a certain political movement are also impacting teacher recruitment and retention.
We have also heard from school districts across the state that they can no longer afford to offer a wage advantage for those seeking to teach in Alaska. This was highlighted in a suppressed report from the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development.
According to the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development report, Alaska ranked 10th for teacher pay behind states like California, Washington, and New Jersey. Alaska is just a little bit better than the average teacher pay in Illinois. We all know that Illinois has a much lower cost of living than Alaska.
And this brings me to inflation. During the 30-year period from 1992 to 2022, national inflation was 108%. Unfortunately, over those same 30 years teacher wages in Alaska went up less than 70% and here’s the real kicker: over the last 20 years, the average inflation-adjusted wages for teachers fell more than 4% while wages grew for those with bachelor’s degrees who were not teachers. Think about that for a moment. Certified teachers, who by definition have to have a bachelor’s degree, can make more money doing something else rather than in our classrooms where we need them the most.
The data in the report about the shrinking wage advantage paid by Alaska’s schools is incredibly useful as education stakeholders try to find ways to recruit and retain teachers to ensure that Alaska has a strong and vibrant public education system that can serve every student, no matter where they live or what their parents do for a living.
Good teachers should be paid as much as those in other valued professions and Alaska’s school districts should have the financial resources to pay teachers accordingly. Alaska has unique advantages in attracting and retaining teachers, but those advantages cannot overcome non-equitable compensation and the lack of a pension. The easiest and simplest way to empower school districts to recruit and retain high-quality educators is to increase the base student allocation (BSA) and pass a reinstatement of a defined benefit retirement system.
“In 1980, Alaska teachers made 170 percent of the national average for teachers, which made recruiting easy despite the higher cost of living and, sometimes, the adjustment to remote rural life. In the decades since, Alaska has fallen closer to the national average while some states have increased their teacher pay in comparison.” - Excerpt from the report titled “Teachers’ shrinking wage advantage - Alaska used to pay the most, but now we’re tenth”
Back in May, the Senate passed a bill that included the largest single BSA increase in Alaska’s history. When the 2024 session starts in January, it will be the Alaska House of Representative’s turn to act. Senate Bill 140, sponsored by my colleague Sen. Lyman Hoffman from Bethel, is positioned so that the House can quickly pass the bill and send it to Governor Dunleavy for his signature. Increasing the BSA will give school districts the resources they need to improve public education in Alaska, including increasing teacher pay.
The next step is to pass Senate Bill 88 and reinstate a defined benefit system for our public school educators. This legislation is poised and ready to move and I look forward to voting for it when it hits the Senate floor.
If you want to learn more about public education funding in Alaska, I recommend attending the next Helen & Edward Gorsuch Public Policy Forum on December 7 on the campus of the University of Alaska Anchorage. The public policy forum will look at the history of how we fund schools in Alaska and compare our education investments to other states. The forum will include several ISER researchers and education policy expert Lawrence Picus from the USC Rossier School of Education. He’s one of the foremost experts in the country on public financing of schools and linking resources to student performance. It should be a fascinating discussion.
