Dunleavy charter school demands would lead to private school vouchers

There is one important lesson to draw from Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s demand to give his political allies on the state school board the power to create charter schools and override local school boards—this is his path to creating private school vouchers in Alaska.

The Alaska Constitution bans the use of public money for private schools, but Dunleavy has long tried to circumvent that provision or amend it out of existence.

In 2013, he proposed a constitutional amendment to allow private school vouchers and a bill that would set up a financial transfer that would accomplish the same thing under a different name.

The constitutional amendment backed by Dunleavy and others, including the Mat-Su superintendent, Deena Paramo, (now education commissioner Deena Bishop) never passed.

But a version of Dunleavy’s Senate bill 100 did pass in 2014. Its legality has been questionable from the start.

As Anchorage Daily News reporter Richard Mauer wrote at the time, “Dunleavy's Senate Bill 100, which he admits may be unconstitutional unless the amendment passes, would allow parents of home-schooled children to spend their allotment of public funds on supplemental and correspondence classes at private and religious schools and institutions.”

A decade ago, Dunleavy said at times that the provisions in his bill to allow private schools to be paid would require a constitutional amendment.

In 2013, legislative lawyers told Sen. Mike Dunleavy and his staff member, Bethany Marcum, that the matter was a complex one that would have to be decided by the Alaska Supreme Court.

A key 1979 decision found that tuition grants for Sheldon Jackson University, a private college, were illegal under the Alaska Constitution.

Here is that 2013 legal opinion about the many questions regarding the matter, most of which remain unsettled.

Dunleavy asked legislative lawyers in 2013 if it would be constitutional to give public funds to a student attending Monroe Catholic. They said it “appears to be prohibited,” although the courts would have the final say.

In May 2022, the wife of Dunleavy’s attorney general said that thanks to Dunleavy’s work as a legislator in 2014, she and her husband had a right to get thousands of public dollars from the state to spend on their children’s education at private schools.

Jodi Taylor said that she and AG Tregarrick Taylor wanted $8,000 from the state to reimburse them for tuition they paid at the St. Elizabeth Ann Seton private school.

At the time the Taylors’ children attended the Family Partnership Charter School, which has since lost its charter in the Anchorage School District over allegations that the school’s government board had violated state laws, school district policies and the school’s charter.

“Thanks to Dunleav’s 2014 statute, private schools have been added to the list of allowable vendors for parents,” the AG’s wife said.

A lawsuit challenging the legality of the ideas promoted by Dunleavy, the wife of the attorney general, and the attorney general is pending in state court.

The lawsuit, filed by parents and teachers, says the state law championed by Dunleavy “is being used to reimburse parents for thousands of dollars in private educational institution services using public funds thereby indirectly funding private education in violation” of the Alaska Constitution.

The voting members of the state school board today are Dunleavy followers who want to create charter schools that would operate across the state like correspondence schools, expanding upon the approach taken by the attorney general’s family—creating the equivalent of private school vouchers paid for with public funds.

Students could be enrolled in a public charter school and a private school, as described by the attorney general’s wife, and use public money to offset private school tuition and other expenses.

There are hundreds or thousands of families using this approach now, though it may be unconstitutional, and the state school board would surely work to expand the practice as much as possible, diverting money from public schools.

The path to private school vouchers chosen by Dunleavy has been clear for more than a decade, even though the Alaska Constitution contains this ban: “No money shall be paid from public funds for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.”

The argument will be made that money paid to reimburse parents for private school tuition is not a “direct” benefit to the school, but a direct benefit to the people who attend the school. It’s a direct benefit to the school if the money boosts enrollment, which it does.

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