'Serious condition of dilapidation': Alaska lawmakers show renewed interest in school maintenance funding

Yahoo

16-03-2025

Mar. 16—Alaska lawmakers are showing renewed interest in addressing a backlog in school building maintenance in the wake of a report detailing the costly ramifications of years of underfunding school infrastructure in rural Alaska.
An investigation published by KYUK and ProPublica earlier this month highlighted the impacts of neglect of state-owned schools in predominantly Alaska Native communities, including one in Sleetmute that has been condemned after the state failed to fund its 19-year-old maintenance request.
The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development broadly recommends that 3% of building values be allotted annually to meet capital renewal needs. Since 2020, the state has spent less than a fifth of that recommended amount annually, leading to a maintenance backlog that likely amounts to billions of dollars.
The backlog has also had a chilling effect on school districts' willingness to apply for funding from the state — as administrators know their costly proposals could languish, unaddressed, for years.
Alaska legislators largely pinned the blame for recent underfunding on Gov. Mike Dunleavy and his administration. This year, Dunleavy's budget draft includes no proposed funding to cover the $333 million in appropriations recommended by the education department for school maintenance.
"Has the governor's lead agency, the Department of Education, really been the strong voice that's been necessary in terms of the ranking and the putting forward of these projects into the governor's budget submission?" asked House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, a Dillingham independent. "I can look back in time and tell you the Legislature should have done more, but so should the executive branch."
[A rural Alaska school asked the state to fund a repair. Nearly two decades later, the building is about to collapse.]
Sen. Lyman Hoffman, a Bethel Democrat, pointed to St. Paul, where he said a problem in the HVAC system led more than half the students in the school to become ill. A $4.2 million request from the Pribilof Island School District to replace the system was ranked sixth on the state maintenance list and granted no funding in Dunleavy's budget draft.
"I believe it is the governor's intent that the Legislature evaluate the fiscal situation and provide what it can," Lori Weed, school finance manager for the state Department of Education and Early Development, told the Senate Finance Committee on Friday.
Sen. Bert Stedman, a Sitka Republican, pointed out in response that though the governor did not include funding for school maintenance, he did ask for $6.5 million to purchase a new airplane for the Department of Public Safety.
"My concern is that the priorities of the request to the Legislature are questionable," said Stedman. "I personally would put the HVAC system substantially higher than the airplane."
The governor did not respond to an interview request and a list of written questions about his approach to school maintenance funding.
The state for years has underfunded its aging school infrastructure. Unaddressed, small repairs have become massive expenses. The problem has been exacerbated during Dunleavy's tenure, according to Sen. Jesse Kiehl, a Juneau Democrat.
"This has been building for a very long time," he said, but "it seems to be intensifying in the last six or seven years."
In the five years between 2011 and 2015, the state spent 111% of the recommended amount on school building maintenance. In the most recent five years, that has dropped to 19%. And the schools are not getting any easier to maintain: The average age of Alaska's school buildings is 45 years.
Dunleavy has regularly vetoed school maintenance funding from the budget, including a $21.6 million appropriation in 2021; $62.5 million in 2022; and a $10 million appropriation in 2023.
Asked if he was worried about Dunleavy again vetoing funding for school maintenance, Kiehl said he is "often concerned with this governor's veto decisions."
Still, lawmakers were noncommittal about the amount of school maintenance funding they would be able to fit into this year's budget, amid a tight fiscal outlook that has left lawmakers balancing education funding against the size of the Permanent Fund dividend.
Kiehl said he hoped to address "the top rural schools" on the major maintenance list. He also said he wanted to lift a moratorium on school bond debt reimbursement, which was first imposed in 2015 and is set to expire this year unless renewed by lawmakers. Dunleavy has proposed extending the moratorium until 2030.
School bond debt reimbursement allows the state to help local jurisdictions — including Anchorage — by covering half the cost of school building construction and maintenance through bonds. The program also sends funds to unincorporated areas of the state that do not have the ability to issue bonds.
By eliminating the state's share of bond debt payments, "we're just shifting costs 100% to local taxpayers and pretending that we're not raising everybody's taxes," said Kiehl.
'Kasayulie 2.0'
Hoffman said that without a broader solution to the problem of maintenance in Alaska's rural schools, the state could again face a costly lawsuit over its unequal treatment of education in rural, largely Indigenous communities.
In 2011, the state announced a $146 million settlement in a 14-year-old lawsuit, known as the Kasayulie case, that alleged funding inequalities for rural public schools.
"I would assume that we are on the brink of another Kasayulie 2.0 coming to us that may be more costly to the state than if we came forward and tried to do something about the condition of these schools," Hoffman said Friday.
Weed, with the education department, said it would take "a significant investment" to bring all school buildings across the state up to industry standards. She said that maintenance backlogs were exacerbated by stagnant funding for school operations.
Dunleavy has repeatedly resisted and vetoed requests to increase overall education funding for public schools.
"Many school districts' — in the last decade — financial situation has gotten tighter," Weed said. "Districts want to keep money in the classrooms. Maintenance personnel are often not emphasized in the budget, so things do play a losing catch-up process."
Jim Anderson, the chief operating officer for the Anchorage School District, said the district would have had to lay off 300 additional teachers in order to meet its recommended building maintenance target this year.
Lawmakers last year attempted to significantly increase permanent operational funding for what would have been the first time in years. Dunleavy vetoed the bill. As the Legislature has again taken up the task this year, Dunleavy has warned he would again veto funding boosts if they were not tied to policy changes.
'Serious condition of dilapidation'
It is up to the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development to rank the requests submitted to the state. Rural district administrators say the system, as it is currently designed, heaps obstacles on schools that don't have the resources to navigate a cumbersome application process.
The St. Paul HVAC replacement is ranked sixth on the major maintenance list, behind a roof repair for a high school in Anchorage and a Soldotna high school exterior repair, among other projects.
Weed said the education department does not currently evaluate its list ranking to ensure it complies with the Kasayulie settlement. The settlement requires the state to adequately maintain rural schools.
"It would seem to me that the department should do that evaluation because I think there has been discussion that many of the schools in rural areas of the state are in serious condition of dilapidation," said Hoffman.
Some long-unaddressed projects from rural districts have dropped over time in the state's ranking as other projects take top spots, according to data from the Alaska Council of School Administrators.
The Yupiit School District's request to replace a fuel tank for the Tuluksak school was ranked 42 in 2018, and 57 in 2025. A Kake High School plumbing replacement went from 70 to 73. Lisa Parady, director of the council of school administrators, said that disincentivizes school districts from investing the staff time and funds in putting together applications.
"New entryways in urban Alaska sometimes are scoring higher than roof replacements in rural Alaska. Maybe somebody's consultant dollars are paying off a little too well," said Kiehl. "But rural Alaska still has the needs."
Rod Morrison, superintendent of the Southeast Island School District, said the district for 18 years has been requesting funding to replace underground storage tanks for the school in Thorne Bay, a community of 470 residents. In 2008, the request was for $152,686. This year, the request is up to more than $1.1 million. The project is ranked 75th in the state's maintenance list.
The district has also been requesting funding to upgrade a school in Port Alexander for 18 years. In 2008 the district requested just over $110,000. This year, it is requesting more than $1.8 million. The project is ranked 60th.
The funding application "is almost impossible for our smaller schools," said Morrison. He said that it is up to him — the superintendent — to fill out the funding applications to get on the list. "We cannot afford to spend $20,000 or $30,000 or $40,000 to have an engineer come in," he said. "Because that's $20,000 or $30,000 or $40,000 that I have to take from somewhere else."
Weed, with the state education department, said some project requests have been successful even if the district has not hired outside engineers or other contractors to help with the application process, "but probably the best practice would be to go out and get a professional option done, just for the certainty."
During a hearing held by the State Board of Education earlier in the week, board chair James Fields requested that the state education department prepare possible recommendations to make the funding application process easier for rural school districts to navigate.
"Obviously, our system is problematic," Alaska Education Commissioner Deena Bishop said during the board meeting. "We would be, I think, positioned in a very good place to be able to see the troubles that others are finding and be able to recommend solutions."
However, board members — all of whom were appointed by Dunleavy — did not discuss the long-term impact of the apparent lack of funds to cover the projects that do make it onto the list, nor the governor's repeated decisions to veto funding for school maintenance.
"It's been a problem that rural legislators have been all too familiar with," Edgmon said Friday. "We have done everything we possibly could to steer money towards school maintenance and construction. I feel a little bit defensive in any sort of portrayal that rural legislators are just ignoring this problem. We are not."
'The step-child'
The state-owned Mt. Edgecumbe High School, a residential school in Sitka serving students from predominantly Alaska Native communities, is the only school facility operated directly by the state education department. It is also the only school facility that is not funded through the ranked school maintenance list. The school requested $22 million in maintenance funding this year.
Stedman, who resides in Sitka, said that the school is at a unique disadvantage because it is funded through a separate appropriation process, and is typically lumped together with requests from the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities.
When asked by lawmakers, Weed did not know how the transportation department had ranked the school among road and facility projects. Funding for the school's maintenance is not included in Dunleavy's budget request.
"DOT has never in my 20 years advocated for Mt. Edgecumbe," said Stedman. "It's all about, you know, a mechanic station on the Dalton Highway or road problems down on the Kenai or in Anchorage."
The Legislature has repeatedly added specific line items to the budget to address requests from Mt. Edgecumbe, only for the funding to be cut by Dunleavy.
Dunleavy vetoed $2.8 million in maintenance funding for Mt. Edgecumbe in 2024; $1 million in 2023; $6.1 million in 2022; and $7.8 million in 2021.
"Mt. Edgecumbe ends up being the step-child of the entire school system in the state," said Stedman.
Daily News reporter Sean Maguire contributed to this report.