How can Alaska hope to improve education for students amid ongoing budget cuts?

  • House District 34

    • Ed King

      Candidate for House District 34

      Education is so critically important as just a society. We don’t all get born into the same situations and we don’t all have the same opportunities, whether that’s from parents that are able to educate us or from a financial background that provides us with the ability to get educated. So a publicly funded education system is one of the critical components to the American dream and allowing us to be successful, or least have the opportunity to be successful. So we can’t just go down the road of cutting the budget, but we also can’t write a blank check to the school board. We need to really have conversations around what we are trying to achieve and make sure that we’re achieving it in the most cost-effective way possible. We also need to think about being flexible with all of the experience that we’ve had over the last several months, we’ve kind of adapted to a new delivery system for education. So I think maybe we need to kind of think about how we do deliver education, and maybe if we can do it a little differently.

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    • Andi Story

      Candidate for House District 34

      I’m passionate about protecting public education. We are not overfunding education at all. It’s a reasonable level. We want to make sure we are funding our career and technical supports for students, there is nothing more important than making sure our students are ready for Alaskan jobs when they’re done. We have to start with early learning, that’s the best way to have equity is to have kindergarteners start in kindergarten ready to go. And we really have to make sure that our teachers and our staff is supported because they are the biggest in-school reason for how kids do well. And of course, our families are a huge part of our school success. So all of us working together, our partners, we have to stay strong and public education. This is not one area to cut back.

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  • House District 33

    • Sara Hannan

      Candidate for House District 33

      I don’t think they can, unless we start to address the fact that schools simply reflect communities and most communities in Alaska have significant needs and demands for family supports, to address trauma in family structures, to be able to address deficits in education, to be able to instill local control and support for indigenous language instruction programs. And all of that takes money. So unless we wrap our heads around the fact that how we deal with public service and social service impact our education, we can’t just address education. It reflects what’s going on in our communities and they need to be made healthier. We need to instill healthier outcomes for both our young people and our old people so that we can have education thrive and have positive measures for that.

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