OPINION: 15 years of unaddressed inflation have left Alaska's students treading water

I developed a deep respect for well-maintained skiffs and lifejackets two summers ago. My extended family had spent a sunny August afternoon shrimping and fishing northeast of Ketchikan. On our return to town, however, the inexplicable figure of what seemed like a jet-skier waving “hello” from the middle of the cruise ships’ route through the Inside Passage caught our eye. Once “Captain Mike” changed his boat’s trajectory to take a closer look, we could see that we were being hailed by a cold, wet and scared 14-year-old.

Ten minutes before, the skiff the boy’s family had borrowed for the day had lost all power, swamped and flipped. Despite his lifejacket’s failure to inflate, he’d managed to swim under and around the capsized skiff and climb on top of its overturned hull. (He later credited his survival to having joined his high school’s swim team.) As our boat drew closer, we could see that while his father had climbed halfway out of the water, the boy’s elderly great-uncle was not strong enough to have done so. Even worse, the older man’s ancient life jacket had also failed to inflate.

Fifteen years of statutorily unaddressed inflation have left Alaska’s 130,000 students adrift and equipped with defunct lifejackets. Although some have pulled themselves out of harm’s way, many more have been swamped and are now just treading water. Indeed, since graduates of the Class of 2023 first enrolled in kindergarten, every dollar used to staff classrooms, heat buildings, purchase supplies and support activities now requires $1.33. As a direct result, a generation of students has been left to bail water — and, in some cases, sink or swim — amid increasing class sizes, ever more thinly stretched resources, and accelerating rates of teacher turnover.

While unpredictable doses of outside-the-formula funding and a variety of “efficiencies” helped the Anchorage School District maintain relatively stable K-12 Pupil-to-Teacher Ratios (PTRs), and thus class sizes, between the 2010-11 and 2015-16 school years, these interventions could not prevent ASD’s PTRs for grades K-3 and 7-12 from increasing for 2016-17.

Since that year (which is when this year’s eighth-graders enrolled in kindergarten), despite closing schools, eliminating programs, allocating $104 million in federal relief funds to prevent PTR increases over four budget cycles, receiving periodic (and even historic) doses of outside the formula funding, and allocating a half-percent increase to the BSA toward the State’s K-3 reading initiatives two years ago, ASD’s K-12 PTRs have still increased by more than 10%, on average. This year, at least 261 of ASD’s elementary educators and 365 of their counterparts in the district’s middle and high schools are teaching classes larger than 25 students.

Back in February 2019, the ASD administration bluntly asserted that the district’s rapidly growing fiscal challenges and class sizes stemmed from the fact that “The Legislature has chosen not to fund the BSA … at the levels needed to meet inflation since 2010.” Earlier this fall, the state of Alaska’s Legislative Finance Division corroborated that statement. In their review of the extent to which inflation has eroded the value of state funding between fiscal year 2011 and this current school year, the Division concluded that “the peak year” of the value of the BSA “over the past fifteen years, adjusted for inflation, is FY11.” According to its calculations, “To match the buying power of the FY11 BSA in FY25, the BSA would therefore need to increase by $1,808, from $5,960 to $7,768.”

Coming on the heels of a legislative session in which students’ needs for a meaningful, permanent increase to the BSA were reduced to a one-time, $680, outside-the-formula political compromise, an $1,808 “ask” most certainly looks like a big number. But if we increase that figure to account for a projected 2% rate of inflation over the coming year, students enrolled in public schools for the 2025-26 school year will need an additional $155 per student. Using the state’s own figure as a baseline, an inflation-adjusted BSA for fiscal 2026 would increase the statutory BSA by $1,963 from $5,960 to $7,923.

An inflationary adjustment of this magnitude would send life rafts to students across Alaska in the very human forms of classroom teachers, paraprofessionals, counselors, and specialists. Based on the average costs associated with a single full-time educator in ASD, an inflation-adjusted BSA increase of $1,963 for fiscal 2026, if partnered with pension reforms, would enable the district to hire enough educators to reduce K-12 class sizes to levels last seen during the 2015-16 school year and meaningfully align additional resources with the board’s adopted goals for students’ reading, math, and graduation rates.

Our shared reality is that the declining purchasing power of the BSA since July 1, 2010, has directly translated into the failure of Alaska’s students to be able to learn in conditions needed to allow them to achieve state standards. And although students’ needs for more and better connections with their teachers have never been more apparent, districts’ ability to provide the resources to do so has never seemed more insurmountable.

Despite these headwinds, the manner in which Captain Mike recognized the urgency of the capsized family’s situation in Ketchikan two summers ago, maneuvered next to their overturned skiff, calmly gave instructions to safely pull all three individuals onto our boat, and summoned the Coast Guard to the scene gives me hope.

Like Captain Mike, Alaska’s legislators can now take the right actions in the right place at the right time. I am especially encouraged by the recently announced intentions of the presumptive, bipartisan House leadership to provide all students with stable education funding, reduce class sizes, and support conditions for improved outcomes. Swiftly passing an inflation-adjusted increase to the BSA large enough to surmount deficits a decade and a half in the making would accomplish those goals.

Kelly Lessens is the parent of two students enrolled in the Anchorage School District and serves as a member of the Anchorage School Board. Her analysis and opinions do not represent the District or Board.

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