Ignore Dunleavy’s edict. End the special session this weekend

Gov. Mike Dunleavy has proven he is not serious about education, which is why the Legislature should vote to override his vetoes and end the wasteful special session—which could cost upwards of $100,000 per day—as soon as possible.

His recycled insults, his juvenile whining about the “education cabal” and his inept performance is tiresome.

Dunleavy says it’s a “shame” that legislative leaders are planning to vote on overrides and end the session soon after it starts.

What’s really a shame is that Alaska’s Worst Governor has done nothing to set the stage for the special session that he ordered.

First he claimed it was about education and agriculture.

Then he confessed it was about preserving his vetoes: “Governor Dunleavy asked House minority members to not show up for the first five days of session because like any governor, he does not want his vetoes overturned,” his spokesman admitted three weeks ago.

Dunleavy is now telling his Republican allies that they should show up.

Now he is back to claiming it was all about his education edicts—which would take more control away from local officials, weaken neighborhood schools and advance incremental steps toward his long-held dream of funding private schools with public money.

Alaska legislators have debated everything Dunleavy pushed and rejected his ideas for good reason. Dunleavy continues to lie that legislators and the “education cabal” don’t want to improve education policy.

His repeated claims that everyone else cares only about money, while he cares about students reflect his arrogance and ignorance.

He acts like an incompetent middle school principal with a captive audience who can force underlings to detention if they don’t do exactly as ordered.

Dunleavy says “the public discourse is all about money. They say if we only spent more of it the scores would improve. That is the same excuse that has been made for decades. As soon as more money is approved, the special interest groups and unions get very quiet.”

Dunleavy can’t name a single public official or intelligent person who believes that money alone will solve the challenges of education. Dunleavy is lying by claiming that those who disagree with him have the idiotic view that money solves everything.

Every time Dunleavy mentions throwing money at a problem, especially in regard to education, he should be reminded that the giant pay raise he engineered for himself and his top employees is a better example of throwing money at a problem than increasing school funding.

Increasing the state commitment to education to bring back music, the arts and other necessary ingredients of a complete education is not throwing money at a problem.

The problem is the governor.

School board members, teachers, administrators, parents, legislators and Alaskans from across the state have told Dunleavy he is wrong, but he never listens and never learns.

This podcast with Rep. Andrew Gray interviewing Sen. Bill Wielechowski and Rep. Rebecca Himschoot shows one of the things that Dunleavy hasn’t learned—that open enrollment is not the miracle change that he claims and it is more complicated than he claims. There are good reasons why legislators objected to the edict.

I wrote here in January that Dunleavy would not accomplish anything this year on education policy unless he stopped acting as if he had all the answers. He hasn’t stopped.

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