Alaska.

Insight is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

And by viewers just like you.

Thank you.

As lawmakers grapple with funding needs that outweigh available revenue.

Rural school districts are desperate for funds to repair crumbling buildings.

And if we go down underneath this section of the building here, over in that section, you can go down there and you just pick up chunks of foundation that are this big.

It's just fallen apart.

The state Senate passed a reduced capital spending plan that focuses on school maintenance.

But how far will the funds go?

And will the governor sign it?

We'll discuss it right now on Alaska Insight.

Rural school districts are trying to keep school buildings maintained so kids have a clean, healthy atmosphere for learning.

But years of requests that have far exceeded available funding have left many districts in great need for hundreds of millions of dollars in repair or replacement costs for school buildings.

How much lawmakers will be able to help through the capital budget is being watched closely across the state.

Tonight, we'll hear from legislators about how they're working on these funding requests.

Before we get to that discussion, here are some of the top stories of the week from Alaska Public Media's collaborative statewide news network.

Governor Mike Dunleavy on Thursday vetoed a bill that would have boosted the basic per student funding amount for public schools by $1,000.

The veto was widely expected, with the governor calling the bill a joke after senators stripped out a variety of policy provisions previously included in the bill.

As an effort to seek compromise.

Dunleavy instead said he would introduce a bill on Friday that raises the base student allocation by $560 less than what schools received last year, along with $35 million in targeted funding and a set of policy changes.

House and Senate leadership say they plan to meet in joint session to attempt a veto override early next week, but given that the bill passed with a one vote majority in each chamber, lawmakers don't expect that to succeed.

The governor's administration released a long delayed study on state workers salaries on Wednesday.

The study shows that more than a quarter of the jobs surveyed paid less than the median market wage and more than 40% pay less than a key benchmark for the state that the state has used for decades.

A spokesperson for the state Department of Administration declined an interview, but noted that the report had mixed findings, with some job categories still paying competitively.

Heidi Dry Gas, who heads the Alaska State Employees Association, said that the study offers some insight into the nearly 3000 state jobs that were vacant at the beginning of this year.

Despite the release of the study.

Dry gas said her union will continue a lawsuit seeking to obtain earlier drafts of the study, which the state says were not used in decision making and are therefore not public records, at least for International University of Alaska students have had their visas revoked by the Trump administration.

They are among hundreds across the country facing removal after losing their visas.

In a statement, University of Alaska officials said four UAH students received word their visas were terminated without any prior notice.

Anchorage based immigration attorney Margaret Stock described the revocation as totally illegal.

According to stock, there hasn't been a consistent reason given to students for the termination of their visas, but officials have made vague references to criminal records checks.

Officials with the State Department did not respond to requests for comment on this story.

You can find the full version of these and many more stories on our website.

Alaska public.org or download the Alaska Public Media app on your phone this evening.

Our discussion is centered on the needs of rural administrators and educators to keep their buildings in good shape so students can have a positive learning environment.

For years, Alaska school districts statewide have submitted hundreds of millions of dollars in requests for help with the high cost of fuel, transportation, construction and maintenance.

And for years, Alaska's lawmakers haven't been able to fund many of those needs.

The state's rural school districts face huge maintenance funding constraints, leading to growing concerns over public health and safety.

As part of Propublica's local reporting network, Kyou senior reporter Emily Schwing visited rural schools and found extensive problems joint session of the House and Senate Education Committees in February.

Our students all across Alaska represent the strong future of our state.

Constituents told lawmakers Alaska's most rural schools pose serious public health and safety risks to teachers, students and staff.

Please go visit our schools.

Come out to the rural areas.

Take a look at the leaky roof and the part of the parts that are underneath it.

And we don't have space for other students in sleep.

On the upper Kuskokwim River, conditions inside and outside of the school are some of the worst in the state.

The foundation is crumbling.

There's mold throughout the building, and there's a bat infestation in a boiler room.

You 25 teachers and students spend time here every day.

Last October, Taylor Hayden, who does maintenance work for the school district, gave Alaska's speaker of the House Bryce Edman, a tour.

And if we go down underneath this section of the building here, over in that section, you can go down there and you just pick up chunks of foundation that are this big.

It's just been falling apart.

Multiple reports since 2021 indicate the back portion of Slate Mute School could collapse.

School districts statewide apply annually for construction and maintenance funds from the state education Department.

Hundreds of proposals from rural and urban school districts are ranked.

Those rankings are submitted to lawmakers so they can decide how to fund the state's annual budget.

State records show that over the last 25 years, rural school districts have submitted nearly 1800 funding requests for capital projects.

Fixes and improvements to buildings.

Only about 14% of those projects have been funded.

In January, governor Mike Dunleavy introduced his proposed education bill for the coming year, with no mention of money that would be specifically earmarked for school construction and maintenance.

Education is a big issue down here in Juneau, as it is in most state, capitals and legislatures.

Education is one of the primary functions of the state government, but Levy's education commissioner, Deena Bishop, says her agency isn't solely responsible for fixing the problem.

And if something's happening in the school, it's most likely happening in other buildings in the community.

So, you know, like it is a collective Alaskan issue, that, that we'd be happy to, to have a seat at the table to discuss.

The majority of students who attend rural public schools in Alaska are indigenous.

Alaska Natives face some of the highest rates of disease and health disparity in the nation.

Problems potentially compounded by conditions inside school buildings.

Speaker.

Edgemont is Alaska Native and says the issue is clear cut.

I think the evidence speaks for itself.

These bright young children show up every morning to go to school in a in a building that's, that's not fit for even anything but being ready to be demolished.

Last summer, the legislature signed off on the largest infusion of cash to school districts in nearly a decade.

$1.5 million will go to help make repairs and sleep mute.

But it's unlikely that money will be enough funding requests for maintenance and construction projects from rural school districts stand at nearly $478 million this year.

It's money many legislators say doesn't exist.

Inslee, mute.

I'm Emily Schwing!

Joining me tonight to help us better understand the scope of the problems facing rural schools and the state's financial challenges in trying to address them is Anchorage Democrat Senator Luke Tobin.

Senator Tobin is also chair of the Senate Education Committee, and Sitka Independent Representative Rebecca Swimsuit is the co-chair of the House Education Committee.

Welcome, both of you.

Thanks so much for being with us.

Thank you for having us.

All right, so after just seeing that footage from sleep Mute, what are your thoughts about addressing this clear need in rural Alaska against the backdrop of the state's fiscal constraints?

Then start us off?

Well, I think clearly the current approach to funding rural schools, major maintenance and deferred maintenance is failing Alaska students.

Every child in our state deserves to have access to a safe building that is going to help them launch into their future career aspirations.

The unfortunate reality is that we are in a state of fiscal decline, and we need policymakers who are willing and able to make some more decisions.

I think many of those you'll see coming from the Senate in the next few weeks related to diversification of our revenue generation for the state and without those resources, we won't be able to even begin to touch the backlog of projects that our rural schools are facing.

Representative him, shoot your thoughts here.

I would agree 100% with everything that Senator Tobin has said, but I would, add to that we don't have a definition right now of deferred maintenance in the state.

So when we refer to deferred maintenance, we're often talking about, D.O.T.

Department of Transportation.

And the last part of their name is and public facilities.

So, so statewide public facilities that we're talking about in the university.

And so we've never really included K-12 in the definition of deferred maintenance.

But through through previous court cases, we have had to address what we do in the RTA, the rural attendance, rural education attendance areas.

And I think that's where Senator Tobin is talking about us falling fairly short.

Clearly, in the case of sleep mute and numerous other locations, our solution and our approach is not meeting the needs.

Backing up a bit, Senator Tobin, you referenced the Molly Hutch decision of the 70s and its relevance right now because it affirms that students should not have to leave their communities to get an education.

Rural schools were built.

You said investing and supporting those facilities has not taken hold in the legislature.

What do you mean by that?

Well, I will say one of the highlights of my time in office has been meeting Commissioner Linde.

He was the education commissioner at the time of the Molly Hutch case, and he has a very strong relationship with the young woman who brought that case to the state.

And he still visits her in Minnesota.

And he often reminds me of the hope that policymakers felt at that moment when they were discussing, how do we decentralize our education system and bring back local control, infuse local knowledge into our systems of learning, and make sure kids are becoming proficient in global standards but also connected to their culture.

Now, during that time, we built 126 schools in 100 communities through a geo bond.

That in today's dollars equates to about 382 million.

It passed overwhelmingly by the citizens of Alaska.

And every day I receive public testimony from Alaskans who say they are willing to give up almost everything to get our students the resources they need.

They are willing to have their PFD garnished.

They're willing to have an education head tax, they're willing to pay an income tax.

And this reminds me of how powerful education is when it is locally rooted in locally informed people feel like their communities can thrive.

Absolutely.

Such an important point.

Representative him suit.

You noted the difference in how school buildings are faring and hub communities in rural Alaska compared to more remote schools.

Talk about what you're hearing about the concern over building safety.

I can just give an example directly out of one of my 11 school districts in the area that I represent, which is House District to Yakutat, to Heidelberg.

We have a school in that in one of my districts that has a failed fire panel.

As a result, there has to be a human being in the school 24 seven.

So that's easy.

During the school day, they also have to pay someone to be there evenings, weekends, nighttime, because of the risk of fire when they finally were funded to go ahead and deal with that fire panel, they had a leak in the roof.

So they decided to take the funding and apply it to the leaky roof.

And as far as I know, I need to check back in with them.

But the fire panel is still an issue, so that's that's in a district here in Southeast Alaska that really has no recourse.

What can they do?

They turn to the AA fund and and then roll the dice and hope.

And could the two of you please explain for folks who aren't familiar with Aria funds, what that is and what it provides for rural schools?

Yeah, I'm happy to provide some more context.

So the rural education attendance areas were set when the Molly Hooch case was settled and it established 21 regional districts that actually align with native corporation boundaries.

The idea was, again, that you want to have your local community infuse their voice into education outcomes for their students.

Now, as a part of that, and through legal action, and of course, through some legislation, we have tied funds for our rural schools to fix leaky roofs or address fire panel issues to school band debt reimbursement in our urban areas.

So for the amount that we reimburse urban school districts for their school construction, we put 24%, of that value into the Rural Education Association fund that is meant to address these capital improvement projects, this deferred maintenance in our rural schools.

Unfortunately, because those are so closely tied together through statutory language, when school band debt monitoring was put in place in 2015, we have not recapitalize that fund.

There has been a few instances where the legislature has appropriated dollars, but we don't have that strong mechanism in tie because of that school bond debt moratorium.

Anything you'd like to add?

Representative Jim Shooter that was that is an excellent explanation.

I'll just say that that moratorium on school bond debt is set to sunset this year.

So we we will be obligated once again to use the formula to get some money back into the RDA fund.

But in the meantime, the legislature has at times added funding and at times not so much.

Senator Tobin, you said the state has abdicated its responsibility, given the financial plight.

As Speaker, Edgemont said, we're in a fiscal pickle right now.

What do you think is the best course moving forward, and what do you think can be done through the capital budget to help chip away at that huge list of backlogged need?

Well, I will say the legislature has continually appropriated dollars from the RA fund and from general funds to address school deferred maintenance and capital improvement projects.

This has been occurring my entire time in office, and even before that, unfortunately, we've seen governor after governor veto those dollars, with the reason being to preserve the fiscal stability of the state.

Unfortunately, that has come at the cost of our students quality of education experience and their health and safety.

The legislature is going to have to readdress, how we're providing for these resources.

I think it's time for us to reevaluate the current mechanism, and also to figure out ways that we can hopefully ensure, funding going into these systems from a governor's veto representative.

As a former educator, you spent your career as a teacher.

What do you think is the best course going forward?

As I said, given the constraints of our funding situation, I think, I have to recognize that I was a teacher in a municipal school district.

So we repeatedly would draw on the backing of the municipality to help with emergency situations in our buildings or even just general maintenance.

So I had that benefit.

I was not in an RDA school.

I just want to point out we are not an impoverished state.

We we do have money.

We're a state that has a fantastic sovereign wealth fund.

It's how we determine that we want to prioritize that funding.

And, I think we're finding increasing evidence that we're falling short in that prioritization when it comes to exactly as Senator Tobin said, the quality that we're able to offer our kids, especially for their learning environment in the rural areas.

So we need to look at our priorities and examine what our options are.

People will say money doesn't solve everything.

In this case, it really would solve the problems.

Have either one of you heard that rural districts are getting so frustrated that they may consider suing the state over this lack of funding?

Well, they have before.

That's what the Consigli lawsuit was about.

And we realized through that adjudicated process, the state was in the wrong.

I think if something similar came before us, the evidence would be overwhelming.

But the state is falling quite short of its constitutional obligations to maintain a system of public schools open to every student.

What I anticipate that we will see in the coming months, and if not years, is, the continue to, attrition on our capital improvements list.

So many schools are unable to get their projects listed in those documents because the burden is on them to provide the engineering reports.

And the inspections will also see school districts use more of their based in allocation to continue to address these long standing deferred maintenance projects.

And that is at the sacrifice of student learning.

So there's going to be multiple paths that I think our schools take.

And I'm hoping that the legislature can step in and provide a better response, because that's what we are elected to do.

Have either one of you heard lawmakers talking about, perhaps the idea of a permanent fund dividend pause for a year or two to try to catch up on some of this backlog of maintenance needs or instituting new revenue measures, new taxes.

Representative Hampshire, I can't say I've heard those specific conversations about pausing the dividend.

I haven't heard that conversation, but looking at new revenues is a conversation that I think is ongoing in the building.

I wanted to add, also, Laurie, that we found through, some hearings that we've had in the House Education Committee that only about 60% of districts who could be participating in the capital improvements, process are doing so.

And again, that's that reflects back on what Senator Tobin was talking about.

It's a fairly burdensome process.

So, there may be some legislative things we can do to make that process more straightforward and easier to get through.

But at the end of the day, it still comes down to exactly what you're talking about, which is how will we fund it even when we know what the needs are?

We know.

And you referenced in an earlier interview, Senator, that the school buildings and especially remote communities are much more than just facilities for learning.

Talk a little bit about the importance of those buildings for community cohesiveness.

Well, one piece that I've been working on is looking to see if there's other revenues that we can pursue, such as FEMA disaster preparedness.

We know our school buildings in rural communities are more than just institutions of learning.

They provide a space for the community to get together in the evenings and play basketball there, where folks come and stay overnight if they're visiting the community there where the health clinics are sometimes operated out of, I myself have a pretty colorful story of being stuck in Little Diomede at their school for a month when the airplane was unable to land on the ice runway.

That was a very long experience, but lovely and gratifying in many ways.

Our schools provide so many different opportunities for community to come together, and for community supports to be deployed into, those, those villages and rural areas that need them so desperately.

We also know that those facilities are the safe space that people go when there are natural disasters.

We have great imagery of one of our sitting state senators evacuating to the school in Golovin during Typhoon Mubarak.

These are spaces that are only large enough to house all of the population that have the running water and the internet.

Unfortunately, today many of our rural schools can't clean that.

They have those amenities, and they aren't necessarily safe evacuation points.

So there is a dual obligation that we have in the state to maintain those schools, not just for student learning, but also for community safety.

Rebecca.

Representative him should as a as an educator yourself, talk about your experience in that regard and what you saw about how the the schools are sort of the community gathering place.

Oh, 100%.

Yeah, the schools, boys and girls Club, various other community clubs, even, church groups, sometimes we use school buildings.

So the school is the center of the community.

And I'll just add, we had incredible events in, a school gym here in my district.

The Navy finally apologized for a bombardment that happened back in the 1800s.

And that bombardment was decades and coming.

I'm sorry.

The apology was decades and coming, and the community gathered together in the school gym to host the Navy to receive the apology.

That's how central that is.

There's no other place in the community that could have held that event.

So, and then I think Senator Tillman pointed out, basketball.

Nothing brings real communities together quite like basketball.

So they're 100% the center of the community, both for learning, but also for just sort of the heartbeat of what happens in our communities in real places.

So the schools are multi-functional and multi-valued in these communities.

We're almost out of time, but next week you'll both be back at it and trying to get to a new proposal put together.

Well, I think first we're going to attempt to override the governor on his veto.

This is going to be one of the most crucial, important votes that I think sitting state legislators take.

And I am going to continue to encourage my colleagues to make the right choice.

Representative Hampshire, I couldn't agree more with what the senator just said.

We have one shot at this, and I'll just add that, every issue that we're trying to address in every school in our state right now, is at least in some way helped by the measure that we're trying to override on Tuesday.

All right.

Thank you both so much for the work you're doing on behalf of all Alaskans.

Alaska's youth need safe, clean schools so they can focus on learning.

Dilapidated buildings are not only a safety and health hazard, they're demoralizing for the very people we are depending on to build Alaska's future.

Young Alaskans deserve the best education we can provide, and having a school that they can feel proud of and excited to go to is an important part of building that future.

That's it for this edition of Alaska Insight, visit our website.

Alaska public.org for breaking news and reports from our partner stations across the state.

While you're there, sign up for our free daily digest so you won't miss any of Alaska's top stories of the day.

Thanks for joining us this evening.

I'm Lori Townsend.

Good night.