Dunleavy administration threatens to halt all Fairbanks school funding over charter dispute
Here’s a textbook case of state overreach by Gov. Mike Dunleavy and Education Commissioner Deena Bishop regarding the power of elected officials in Fairbanks to operate the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District.
Bishop’s reach exceeds her grasp of the situation.
The Fairbanks North Star Borough School Board and the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly should reject this arrogant attempt to usurp the powers of local government.
Bishop said she will “redirect district funding” if Fairbanks officials do not obey. Her legal argument is as questionable as her timing.
Her claim contradicts what the attorney general’s office said on May 12—that the state education department has no authority in the law to order the school district to follow its edict to open the Pearl Creek STEAM Charter School.
“The legislature has not provided that DEED, the Commissioner, or the State Board has any authority to enforce a decision approving a charter school application. Nor is DEED or the Department of Law able to provide any legal advice to PCSCS or the school district on this matter,” wrote Susan Greenlee Sonneborn and Morgan Griffin, two senior attorneys in the Department of Law.
It’s noteworthy that the new legal position advanced by Bishop is not from Sonneborn and Griffin, who said the state has no power to order the school district on this matter.
The school district had good reason to challenge the Dunleavy administration’s effort to override the local school board on this charter school.
In her letter, Bishop chided the school district for failing to ask for a stay. In fact, the district went to court and asked that the state edict be voided because of a violation of the open meetings act.
Bishop has claimed that even if a school board has decided that approving a charter school will damage the finances of the district, as happened here, the charter school must be approved.
In April, the appointed members of the state Board of Education, following the state instruction that a charter application filled out correctly had to be approved, overturned a unanimous decision by the elected members of the Fairbanks North Star Borough School Board and ordered that the proposed Pearl Creek STEAM Charter School be approved.
The state school board, all members appointed by Dunleavy, did not conduct a public vote, but issued this document signed only by Sally Stockhausen the president of the board.
Bishop demanded Wednesday that the school district takes steps to lease the old school building to the charter group and unless a move is made to hire a principal and staff. “Failure to do so will put the district’s funding at risk,” said Bishop.
Bishop should not have inserted herself in the ongoing legal battle.
And Bishop should have tried to get the facts right. The school building lease is a borough matter and the assembly has called a special meeting next Thursday to advance a measure to allow a lease to the proposed charter school at “less than fair rental value.”
The assembly should not approve this lease without making it clear what level of subsidy it wants to provide to the charter school. That will generate questions about whether it should give a similar subsidy to other charter schools in the borough.
Complicating matters is that Mayor Grier Hopkins has been an advocate of the charter school. He has recused himself from the issue, but an employee of his will be asked to negotiate the lease, which does not eliminate the conflict of interest. It puts his staff member in a difficult position.
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