Barbara Tyndall, named by Gov. Mike Dunleavy to the Alaska State Board of Education, was asked at a confirmation hearing March 20 if she agreed with the three-sentence provision in the Alaska Constitution that sets the standards for public schools.

Tyndall, who taught for 20 years at North Pole Christian School, said she went to a public school, graduating in Valdez in 1967. Her five kids went to public schools and she home-schooled them at times. She said she realizes public schools are secular.

“So yeah, I agree with that,” she said to Sen. Elvi Gray-Jackson about the language in the Constitution. “For now.”

“For now,” Gray-Jackson said.

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There are not thousands of students on waiting lists in Alaska trying to get into charter schools, contrary to claims by the Dunleavy administration.

Education Commissioner Deena Bishop, who calls herself a “data nerd,” testified Wednesday that she believed there are about 2,000 students in Anchorage alone on waiting lists to get into charter schools. The real number is about 350.

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The Alaska Industrial Development & Export Authority has developed the bad budget habit of bypassing the public and the legislative authorization process required by the Alaska Constitution and state law for capital projects.

AIDEA has done this routinely under Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who treats the corporation like a private development bank that answers only to him, operating with no oversight from the Legislature. State law says it’s not supposed to be that way.

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“I think the educational discussion is over and we got to move into energy,” Dunleavy said.

The lethargy conveyed in that sentence stands in contrast to the urgency of the situation in Alaska’s schools.

The state employee hired to lead the education department, Deena Bishop, is the model of lethargy when it comes to answering questions about what Dunleavy claimed was his priority before he moved onto energy.

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Sens. Robert Myers, Mike Shower and Reps. Frank Tomaszewski, Mike Cronk, Kevin McCabe, Mike Prax and Will Stapp said Brandy Harty no longer deserves to be school board president in Fairbanks.

Nonsense.

The politicians have yet to accept their share of the responsibility for the budget crisis facing Alaska schools. They are desperate to change the subject.

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The revised contract with Craig Richards as statehood defense coordinator for the Dunleavy administration expires at the end of May, but the agreement does not authorize enough money to pay him until then.

I’ve asked the attorney general’s office for an explanation on the discrepancy between the promise to pay Richards $12,000 a month until May 31 and a contract that is tens of thousands short.

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The $700 billion claim is bogus, about as reliable as the press release from Taylor’s office—which remains uncorrected on the AG’s website—that the state government created the $700 billion guess and that the federal government has violated the “statehood act of 1953.”

Perhaps the attorney general doesn’t know as much about the statehood defense industry as he lets on.

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Wealthy hunters, both in Alaska and Outside, bestowed hunting gifts worth $55,000 or more on Gov. Mike Dunleavy last year, equal to more than one-third of his salary.

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As I wrote here last summer, nothing that John Espindola did during his years of working for the state as a “personal assistant” and policy analyst for Gov. Mike Dunleavy qualifies him to serve on the Regulatory Commission of Alaska.

And it is doubtful that the work Espindola did in New Mexico in the years before he hired on with Dunleavy in 2018 meet the minimum educational and professional requirements spelled out in state law about the people entrusted to regulate Alaska’s utilities.

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More and more, the agency is becoming the most powerful branch of the governor’s office, one that operates with little or no legislative oversight.

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A patsy parade of 20 Republican legislators sided with Gov. Mike Dunleavy in blocking the bipartisan education bill that most of the 20 voted for last month.

Nearly two-thirds of the Legislature voted to override the veto of the bipartisan education bill, one vote shy of the margin needed to enact the measure into law. The vote was 23-16 in the House and 16-4 in the Senate.

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