Sitka Rep. Rebecca Himschoot introduced a bill (HB 69) that would have increased student funding by $1,000 — the first substantial boost to schools in a decade. Even though she considered it a half-measure relative to the rate of inflation, legislators couldn’t muster the votes to override when the governor vetoed it. Sen. Bert Stedman’s Finance Committee arrived at a $700 increase that did survive a veto, but he’s not sure it’s enough to reverse the decline in teacher salaries that has eroded the ability to recruit even in-state graduates into the profession. (Gavel Alaska photos)
Alaska’s schools received the first significant permanent increase in state funding in a decade this year, after a remarkable parliamentary drama that took place over the last two years.
Sitka Representative Rebecca Himschoot doesn’t belong to either political party, but she is a career teacher, and she was a driving force behind the legislation to keep the state’s schools adequately funded.
The legislative session adjourned for the year on May 20. Himschoot recently visited KCAW and spoke with Robert Woolsey about her involvement in the effort to successfully pass school funding.
HIMSCHOOT: “There’s a lot of work that goes into an override like that. So I think for context, it’s important to realize that half of the funding the legislature appropriated in FY ‘24 had been vetoed. And then the following year, Senate Bill 140 was vetoed, which was a great compromise bill that had a lot of elements that were desired by people across the political spectrum. And then this year, House Bill 69 was vetoed, (KCAW: your bill), my bill correct, and so the legislature has been doing the will of the people we’re elected to represent for, I would say, a number of years now, only to run up against what some people call the ‘61st vote.’ You have your 60 legislators, but without the governor, you can’t, you can’t get things done. So we’ve been trying for years to respond to what is nothing less than a crisis in our public schools across the state. And I think the override (of House Bill 57) that happened, there was a build up to that. Of course, there was a lot of conversation, a lot of hard work, a lot of compromise. So when the moment came, I think the most telling part of the override was that the Senate has to enter the House chamber. They take the role to make sure we’re all there. They pose the question, we voted and we left. There wasn’t a single floor speech that day, no one had anything to say. We’re done talking. We’ve exerted our will. We’ve exercised what we’ve been asked to do by the people of Alaska, and we’ve been doing it multiple times, and it’s time to finally act. And I think that’s what we saw that day.
KCAW: “What changed between SB 140 last year and HB 57 this year? because last year, after the veto, it’s like the wind went out of everybody’s sails, and the thing was swept off the priority list for a while. So what do you think changed? Was it that the makeup of the legislature changed, and that that kept momentum for education strong?”HIMSCHOOT: “Yes, I think there are two things that changed. One is exactly what you said, the momentum: We have coalition majorities in both bodies, so the House and Senate leadership, for the first time in many years, are aligned, and both were prioritizing education, and the reason they’re prioritizing education is the other thing that changed, which is the crisis has just grown to such a such a magnitude, that we must respond. We cannot kick the can anymore. When you see what’s happening in our schools and across the state, it doesn’t matter if it’s a rural school or an urban school, everyone is in crisis. When you see that, you have to respond, so by having aligned bodies and by allowing the crisis to get as bad as it has, yeah, collectively, the will to do something, grows.”
Note: Although the legislature overrode Gov. Dunleavy’s third veto of education funding last month, there’s a possibility that he could still veto the actual appropriation of the funding anytime before June 19. A veto that late in the year, however, would throw many districts into financial disarray just as school is about to begin, and many legislators doubt that even this governor – a former school superintendent himself – would choose that option.
Sen. Bert Stedman sheds light on budget process
With over two decades under his belt in the Alaska Senate, Bert Stedman never appears terribly disturbed by what happens in the state capitol. He’s seen his share of both wins and losses, and understands that balancing those opposites are how things work in the legislature.
Stedman stopped by KCAW recently to reflect on the last legislative session. He spoke with Robert Woolsey.
I bumped into Sen. Bert Stedman in Harrigan Centennial Hall on the day of Sitka’s special election (May 28). Everyone else was weighing in at the ballot box on whether to limit cruise traffic in town.
Stedman was there to speak to the Board of Trustees of the Alaska Permanent Fund, which was holding a two-day meeting. Stedman wants to see the fund modernized, and protected by a constitutional amendment that would prevent a simple majority of the legislature from draining the Constitutional Budget Reserve – where earnings from the fund are socked away.
He also wouldn’t mind if the Senate had a say in appointing trustees, but he doesn’t think that will happen.
“We don’t have the ability to confirm them, although we would like to,” said Stedman. “But we got this pesky document called the Constitution and Separation of Powers in the way, so we’re unable to accomplish that. And we would obviously like that (ability), but we do not. So they are appointed by the governor, and hopefully we’ll go back to the way it has historically been managed. And I’m not saying that there’s political cronyism going on today, but there seemed to be a whiff of it in here a little bit ago, and hope we put that in the rear view mirror and never see it again.”
On other money matters, Stedman has extraordinary influence. He co-chairs the Senate Finance Committee, which writes both the state’s operating and capital budgets. One positive outcome of this year’s legislative session was a $700 increase in per-pupil funding for schools – the BSA, or base student allocation. That $700 figure came out of Stedman’s committee.
“So we were pursuing the $680 BSA with the numeric within the budget plan to get to a balanced budget,” he said, “and we got an agreement from most of our colleagues – at least the recognition that there wasn’t going to be a $1,500 or $1,000 BSA, and we’re gonna have to have a different number. But some of them wish the number was different from $680. It could be $679 or $681, they were just tired of hearing $680. So the next day we decided, ‘Well, let’s just add $20 bucks. $700 is a nice round number. That’s where it came from. Just that simple.”
Stedman voted to sustain the governor’s veto of two previous bills that had larger increases to schools, but he joined 45 other legislators in overriding the governor’s veto of the $700 increase. However, he knows the issue is not settled.
“My guess is that this discussion is far from over,” said Stedman. “We have housing issues with teachers in a lot of the rural parts of the state. The retention issue – a lot of us believe that’s fundamentally based in salaries. Some of the entry level salaries are too low to retain them. When a young Sitkan graduates from Sitka High School, goes off and gets a teaching certificate, and then goes to work in the Midwest or Florida or wherever, because they can pay them more as an entry level teacher than we can in Alaska, something’s wrong. We have a higher cost of living. And then you take a look at Sitka, in particular, we have extremely high housing, so we get a double-whammy.”
Stedman, a Republican, shares the chairmanship of the Finance Committee with Lyman Hoffman, a Democrat from Bethel. Hoffman manages the operating budget; Stedman takes the capital budget, the money for maintaining and building state infrastructure. Both budgets are closely connected to the price of oil, Alaska’s most valuable export.
Stedman is frustrated by policy from the Trump administration that runs counter to Alaska’s interests.
“The headwinds just keep getting worse out of Washington,” he said. “I mean, almost every other week there’s some bad news: We’re going to lose, you know, Medicaid reimbursements, and and then right before we left (at adjournment), it was LIHEAP (low income fuel assistance) for a lot of citizens, including some in Sitka. Anyway, there’s a whole litany of things on the hit list in Washington, and we don’t know how bad they’re going to be, but they weren’t positive. And the direction out of Washington to move oil prices down to stimulate the economy, that’s good for California, but it’s not good for Alaska, because we are an oil-based economy.”
Oil is very volatile right now; Stedman’s committee worked to cover basic capital expenses assuming the price would not drop below $66 per barrel. He says many of the expenses covered in this budget should be double – even triple – what the state can afford. Gone are the billions available only a decade-and-a-half ago. He sees more lean times ahead, if the White House gets its way.
“What I mentioned many, many times to my colleagues in both the House and the Senate, when they would bring up the budget, I’d just flat tell them, nobody’s getting anything,” Stedman said. “Doesn’t matter if you’re in the majority, or the minority, how long you’ve been here, what position you are in – it’s zero. Everybody gets a lump of coal. And next year, if we end up at $60 a barrel, you’re not even going to get the coal. You’re just going to get the bag it came in this year.”
Sen. Bert Stedman represents Sitka, Petersburg, Wrangell, Ketchikan, and all communities in between. He’ll run for his sixth full term next year.
