Legislature(1997 - 1998)
11/13/1997 05:00 PM Senate HES
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* first hearing in first committee of referral
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TOWN MEETING ON SCHOOL FUNDING REFORM
SENATE HEALTH, EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SERVICES COMMITTEE
SENATE FINANCE COMMITTEE
West High School Library
Anchorage AK
November 13, 1997
5:00 P.M.
SENATE HESS MEMBERS PRESENT
Senator Gary Wilken, Chairman
Senator Loren Leman
Senator Jerry Ward
SENATE HESS MEMBERS ABSENT
Senator Lyda Green
Senator Johnny Ellis
SENATE FINANCE MEMBERS PRESENT
Senator Randy Phillips
SENATE FINANCE MEMBERS ABSENT
Senator Drue Pearce, Co-Chairman
Senator Bert Sharp, Co-Chairman
Senator Dave Donley
Senator Sean Parnell
Senator John Torgerson
Senator Al Adams
ALSO IN ATTENDANCE
Senator Dave Donley
Representative Terry Martin
Representative Eric Croft
COMMITTEE CALENDAR
TOWN MEETING ON PUBLIC SCHOOL FUNDING
OTHER TOWN MEETINGS ON PUBLIC SCHOOL FUNDING REFORM
Ketchikan - 11/12/97
WITNESS REGISTER
Mr. Robert Gottstein
KTUA Radio
Anchorage AK
Mr. Tom Obermeyer
3000 Dartmouth
Anchorage AK 99509-4413
Mr. Carl Rose, Executive Director
Alaska Association of School Boards
316 W 11th St
Juneau AK 99801
Mr. Jeff Lipscomb
9921 Main Ave.
Anchorage AK 99516
Ms. Lael Marlow
7230 E. Chester Hts.
Anchorage AK 99504
ACTION NARRATIVE
TAPE 97-52, SIDE A
CHAIRMAN WILKEN called the meeting to order and announced they
would discuss school funding reform.
[DUE TO POOR TAPING QUALITY THE OPENING REMARKS WERE NOT
TRANSCRIBED.]
TAPE 97-52, SIDE B
REPRESENTATIVE TERRY MARTIN asked that they consider three things
regarding school funding: Putting a cap on school administration,
consolidating small numbers of children, and a hold-harmless clause
for small districts of students. He was also concerned that some
school districts were being paid for kids they weren't teaching.
MR. ROBERT GOTTSTEIN said he serves on the State Board of Education
and has spent most of the last 10 years trying to help the State
and this community to figure out what to do with education and how
to fund it. He agreed that the current foundation formula is not
working and that fairness is an important element in the formula.
He said they need to have a goal which is to educate every child in
the State of Alaska and then pursue the best practices possible to
maximize that in an equitable way. He thought it was important to
set high standards for teachers, schools, and districts as well as
students and to have a way of assessing them. He thought the
people who made those decisions should be parents and teachers. He
would decentralize academic authority and centralize the business
functions of schools like transportation, the legal departments,
food services, etc. and attract the experts in those areas.
TAPE 97-53, SIDE A
MR. GOTTSTEIN informed them that there is a 20% failure rate in
reading at the 4th and 5th grade levels in Alaska. We really have
to think in terms of creating success for every child and we have
an opportunity to do that, he said. The funding formula should be
fashioned to achieve success in an equitable fashion.
He suggested a 90 degree turn from where they are going and
advocated more local control. He supported an area cost
differential, but he had no confidence that the one that's being
contracted is going to give us what we want, because it doesn't
deal with all the important issues. He stated that we need an area
and product cost differential that take into account cyber schools,
boarding schools, correspondence schools, etc. And we only have
enough money to deliver what is reasonable, not the maximum.
What's reasonable needs to give a parent a choice about what
environment their children will go to. He suggested block granting
to school districts giving them a good deal of local control, but
not absolute control.
MR. MARTIN stated the legislature should not distinguish between
transportation and food service. The State should provide a
reasonable amount of money and let the community decide what's most
important and be given the opportunity the execute their decision.
He supported an endowment to be used in lieu of State bonding in
perpetuity. This would give every community in the State the
ability to bond and take some of the resources that the legislature
decided are reasonable. He didn't think it would take a whole lot
more money than what is already appropriated.
MR. GOTTSTEIN said the school district had been paying off debt,
but the savings hasn't been reinvested in the schools. He thought
the State should spend more on transportation. He said the
legislature didn't need to take from one district to give to
another and that there were already enough divisive forces here.
SENATOR PHILLIPS asked if Gottstein thought the Governor's Task
Force on School Funding failed to give his recommendations to the
legislature on education.
MR. GOTTSTEIN replied that the Governor's bill last year was
substantially what the Board had done in their task force meetings.
He supported the per-student formula, as any formula should be
understandable by more than 25 people in the State. He thought
that equity was of paramount importance and that Alaska did not
need more divisiveness. Alaska has such financial and human
resources and an appetite for education that we should be able to
produce good results.
SENATOR WARD said that kids in Anchorage had been treated
differently for over a decade and just because they have done it
doesn't make it any more right. He asked how do we make the
corrections.
MR. GOTTSTEIN said his interpretation of the disparity is different
than what has been described. Eighty percent of the students live
in urban Alaska and get 70% of the dollars. Twenty percent live in
rural Alaska and get 30% of the dollars. If you're talking input,
no one disagrees that it costs more to deliver education in the
bush than in Anchorage. The issue is how much. The
student/teacher ratio is better in rural Alaska, but the schools
are deplorable. The performance of students is worse there. So
taking 5% away from rural Alaska and putting it into the rest of
the State might divert people into believing that will solve the
problems. He thought the area cost differential was the key.
SENATOR WARD asked him if he read the recent response of the group
evaluating the area cost differential.
MR. GOTTSTEIN said he read the proposal and it appears to be an
update of the last study which is substantially fallible. He
encouraged the McDowell Group to get more folks involved with the
study to make sure they are satisfied.
At his suggestion the Governor asked Ken Thompson of ARCO to put
together the best business practices on transportation and food
service and unless the McDowell Group pulls that into the area cost
differential, they are not dealing with a whole component of
funding education. This is not in the proposal.
MR. GOTTSTEIN said that the new formula is flawed, because using it
would give Anchorage a disproportionate amount of funding. You
don't have to take away from others; you give them more
responsibility for building schools and transportation, etc. He
said the study did not get to the detail that is needed to get
education to the best business practices.
MR. TOM OBERMEYER said he has lived here for 20 years and has four
children in the Anchorage school district. He is concerned with
the teacher/student ratio and said if the district could get the
class size down to about 20 students per teacher, they would have
succeeded with the education mandate. He figured with 50,000 kids
in the school district and 20 students per teacher that would equal
a need for 2,500 teachers. He understands that there are 2800 -
2900 teachers in Anchorage and he wanted to know why they couldn't
get 20 students per child with that number of teachers.
He agreed that the formula is crazy, but he thought the
student/teacher ratio was most important. He thought it was the
principal's job to have standards for the teachers.
SENATOR LEMAN commented that he thought they should support all the
alternatives that parents want and facilitate that change.
MR. OBERMEYER said he went to an excellent public school system and
thought people are flocking to alternatives because public
education is doing a disgraceful job. He did not think they should
be taking public money to fund private institutions.
MR. CARL ROSE, Executive Director, Alaska Association of School
Boards, said the legislature needs to decide if they want to
provide a quality education for kids. As a result of inflation he
disagrees with some of the numbers that have been suggested. As an
example, he said, you could buy a pick up truck in 1987 for
$19,000; in 1995 the same truck for $30,000. That represents a 61%
increase. Although he is not suggesting that the legislature
adjust the instructional unit that way, the instructional unit in
1987 was ($60,000 divided by 17 students) $3,529. In 1997 the
instructional unit was ($61,000 divided by 17) $3,588 - a net
increase of $58.83.
He noted that Senator Wilken has brought them a lot closer to more
of the important things than they were last year, but many of his
colleagues are hesitant to move away from the instructional unit
because they understand it. Dealing with education with a $0
budget is wrong because it leaves us with no options in five years.
He asked them to look at how they are going to generate revenues to
meet the five-year gap.
He seriously questioned the exit exam in HB 146 asking if it was a
valid assessment. Was the test accurate, was it biased, was it
fair, he asked.
Objections were raised by many people, he said, asking if there
were standards, would they be willing to provide the curriculum and
would the teachers be prepared to deliver it. Would everyone
across the State have a chance to pass that test, because if they
didn't, there would be litigation. He concluded saying that he was
not here to hamper discussions, but to try to help find a solution.
MR. JEFF LIPSCOMB said he thought they needed more school
districts, because he thought urban parents would be able to have
more input with smaller districts. He noted that at the State PTA
meeting Senator Wilken's figure for the State's contribution to
education was 51% on his chart, but on a constant dollar basis it
was actually 8% less than it was in 1986. If you combine that with
a 26% increase in students since 1986, that is a 30% decrease on a
per-student basis.
MR. LIPSCOMB commented that Representative Martin discussed the
dollars going to the classroom at Service High School which has the
largest student population in the State totaling 2295 kids. The
Anchorage School District has seen its instructional dollars (money
spent on teachers) go from 52% in 1995 to 45% in 1997. As a
percentage funding is going down and in a total gross dollar it's
going down. It takes money to provide education services, he said.
SENATOR WARD said that he helped establish the old funding formula
when they took dollars away from the railbelt and gave them to
other areas. He didn't understand the formula then, but he like
the results at the time. He now sees the importance of
understanding the formula. SENATOR WARD urged people to understand
the formula before the legislature votes on the bill.
MR. LIPSCOMB said AS14.17.220 talks about equal education
opportunities in the State and that's what they need to focus on.
He noted that everyone gets a permanent fund dividend check with
the same number on it. There wasn't too much time spent adjusting
it for cost of living differences. He thought the legislature
needs to keep everything in perspective. He suggested talking
about differentials within a school district like Anchorage and
resolving some of the differences there. A lot of times they talk
about equal outcome, but the law says equal education
opportunities. If they were looking at an equal outcome, the
amount of money on the dividend check would be different.
An UNIDENTIFIED PARENT from the North Slope Borough said the North
Slope Borough wasn't the problem. They only get about 1/2% of the
foundation funding. He invited the committee to the North Slope.
SENATOR WARD said there was an inequity when people are paying in
his district to go to school and people on the North Slope aren't
paying anything.
AN UNIDENTIFIED PERSON from the North Slope took exception to the
comment that the North Slope didn't pay anything. He said the
North Slope Borough paid about 59% of its school budget whereas
Anchorage and Fairbanks paid 26%.
TAPE 97-53, SIDE B
MS. LAEL MARLOW said she is a health educator and works with the
PTA. She said these organizations are investing in our future and
the health of our State and communities. She didn't think we were
spending too much on education statewide, but she thought the money
needed to be reallocated. She thought the teacher/student ratio
needed to be addressed in all schools, but particularly in large
urban areas. She questioned whether the funding money traveled
with children from one school to another. She would like to see
adequate funding at a Statewide level and hold school districts
accountable for the education that's provided. She supports the
quality standard initiative that has been proposed with some
changes. We need fewer districts statewide, but Anchorage is one
of the biggest school districts in the country and it's too large
to meet the needs of changing and diverse areas. The neighborhoods
are not the same two miles apart, let alone from one side of the
State to the other.
MS MARLOW also supported an educational endowment because we have
to think of the future for funding.
An unidentified speaker said that some of their military families
have said that all of their schools are extremely crowded, at 146%
capacity at her school for a number of years. There is also an
issue of military transfers in the middle of the year.
SENATOR LEMAN said that he has talked to folks in the Anchorage
school district about that over the years and is looking for a
solution. He supported moving the date back.
An unidentified speaker said her district felt there needed to be
increased funding statewide. They also believe there should be
some sort of peer audit and an inflation provision. She said there
are special needs students and bi-lingual students that have costs
that need to be recognized. She said that Anchorage has seen an
increase in the cost of education. For example, a math book in
1987 cost $15 and today it costs $32. Schools are also incurring
additional costs related to children and drugs, divorced families,
etc. They support having transportation as a separate funding
outside of the education formula, but that Anchorage should be
treated equitably. They support an area cost differential study
that looks not only at the common market basket, but looks at the
rural and urban differences.
In a simplified formula they would like to see provisions that
allow for the exception. In Anchorage, for instance, the growth
rate for special needs and bi-lingual students is not the same as
for regular students.
SENATOR DONLEY said that Anchorage is badly discriminated against
by the executive branch and how they administer the transportation
between school districts. They are the only district that doesn't
receive the full reimbursement of pupil transportation costs. They
only get reimbursed for 66% and everybody else gets reimbursed
100%. This equals $1 - $2 million per year that Anchorage gets
denied in this process. He thought people should call the Governor
about it.
CHAIRMAN WILKEN thanked everyone for their participation and
adjourned the meeting.
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