The Coalition for Education Equity is preparing to sue the state over what it says is inadequate funding for public schools in Alaska. The group decided to sue after Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed $51 million this month from the state’s per pupil education funding formula.
Executive Director Caroline Storm said the nonprofit is convening multiple districts around the state as plaintiffs, and plans to file the lawsuit within the next few months.
“There's a certain amount of confidence that this line item veto will be overridden in January,” Storm said. “However, that's too late, and it's still not enough.”
Education funding was a top priority for Alaska lawmakers this session, who passed a $700 increase to the Base Student Allocation, the state’s per-student funding formula used to determine how much funding the state distributes to schools. After lawmakers overrode Dunleavy’s veto of the bill, Dunleavy line-item vetoed that funding down to $500 per student earlier this month.
School leaders and lawmakers denounced the veto, but are unlikely to have a chance to override it until the legislature reconvenes in January when schools are halfway through the year.
Storm said the filing will not be a class-action lawsuit, which only provides financial relief to individuals. She said the suit will draw from U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason’s 2012 ruling in the Moore case, filed by the same group. That ruling determined that state funding for school districts was inadequate, and Storm hopes this lawsuit will have a similar result.
“Adequacy is, what does it take to give a child the opportunity, a reasonable opportunity, to learn the content of the standards that has been set by the state,” Storm said. “There's no teacher in the state right now who says, yeah, having a classroom of 30 kindergarteners or 40 5th graders is giving these kids an adequate opportunity.”
Storm declined to name which districts will file as plaintiffs, but said several districts support the suit because they’re unsure how they can continue educating students without an increase in state funding.
