Dunleavy administration blindsides Alaska educators with surprise launch of $525,000 virtual school

For the past few weeks school leaders across Alaska have had daily conference calls with Alaska Education Commissioner Michael Johnson.

These meetings were to help coordinate school planning to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and to allow school officials to make plans for expanded online learning. Teachers, principals and superintendents throughout the state have been focused on revamping plans for the rest of the school year.

What didn’t come up at all is that the state was planning to create a new Alaska Statewide Virtual School, partnering with the Florida Virtual School, just as school districts were developing plans of their own.

Here is the sole-source contract, which was signed March 25. It is technically not a sole-source contract or an effort that required a request for proposals, according to the education department, because the Florida school is a government entity.

One superintendent tells me that never once did Johnson hint that the state would launch a new online virtual school Monday, a project that is in keeping with the philosophy Gov. Mike Dunleavy expressed a year ago when he was out promoting his plan to cut education spending by hundreds of millions.

Why did Johnson blindside Alaska educators, or at least most of them? That’s not clear.

This one-year contract with the Florida Virtual School is about dealing with the immediate issue of closed school buildings, but it is also about advancing Dunleavy’s goal of reducing K-12 spending by promoting cheaper alternatives that require fewer teachers.

There is no justification for Dunleavy doing this without consulting school districts, teachers, administrators, parents and community leaders across Alaska.

Dunleavy hasn’t revealed much about his vision for K-12 education, but a year ago he gave some details in an extended interview with the Kenai Peninsula Clarion.

“So the question is going into the future, do we want to school children or do we want to educate children, because you got a lot of improvements in the way to deliver education through technology,” Dunleavy told the newspaper last March.

“For example, in Mat-Su, we were really focused on increasing our technological reach in terms of online classes, live classes from all over the country, all over the world. Using low-cost alternatives, like Khan Academy, which is free online,” Dunleavy said.

“Sometimes we get hung up on buildings in schooling and less so on educational outcomes. I think there's a tremendous opportunity within this budget discussion to look at ways in which we can educate kids, not necessarily in just a building,” Dunleavy said in 2019.

“Could they take courses at the university? We have a very robust and increasing public home-school approach to education. More and more parents want to look at that so they can develop ILPs, individual learning plans, and use private vendors within the public school context to educate their kids. There's a whole bunch of different things we can do which you're not necessarily tied to a building,” Dunleavy said last year.

In his press release this week, Johnson said, “School is more than a location—education can happen anywhere.”

The state hasn’t explained how the virtual school classes can be meshed with existing programs from districts. Johnson didn’t answer a question Wednesday at the daily coronavirus press conference about when the Florida choice was made and how long this has been in the works when that was put to him by a reporter from the Anchorage Daily News.

The contract says the Florida proposal was submitted to the state March 16.

Some right-wing legislators have been pushing an option like this as a way to cut costs in rural Alaska, claiming that online classes would be an economical replacement for teachers.

There are cultural, social and economic factors that have to be weighed before assuming that a venture of that sort is the right approach. The governor should not have used the health crisis as an excuse to launch what is more than a short-term project without warning or public comment. The press release says the new project “will remain an option for Alaska families.”

The state will say this is not about reducing teachers or cutting school funding. That is true for this moment only. This is a long-term plan by Dunleavy to shift resources to cheaper alternatives.

“I would suggest there'll be tremendous opportunities for educational co-ops to spring up, or 10, 15 kids that want to take online courses — they could get together in buildings other than school buildings,” Dunleavy said last year. “I don't think everyone is in the same boat that they all have to go to a brick and mortar school.”