49th Star: Alaska Statehood, New Flag Official 5th January 1959

June 30th marks the date the Senate voted to admit Alaska into statehood 50 years ago. The celebration begins tonight with activities downtown and ALASKA’S OPERATION GRATITUDE, a tribute to Alaska’s military personnel. Wynonna Judd will perform at Elmendorf Air Force Base  in a concert that will be webcast worldwide by AT&T and locally on KTUU. Following the concert will be a bonfire on the flightline to commemorate the bonfire of 50 years ago.

Alaska officially became the 49th state on January 1, 1959. What’s cool is is so many of those who were there are still around. Folks who were part of territorial government, part of the constitutional convention, who had flags with 48 stars and pinned on a 49th.

Festivities continue tomorrow. We’ll be heading to Arctic Thunder at Elmendorf tomorrow to see the Thunderbirds.

A couple things stood out to me:

• Most importantly for us, Commissioner Thompson stated that these proposed regulations are not a response to abuses by in-district programs. There are not any reports of abuses of public funds. This is contrary to what IDEA’s administration stated to their families.
• The regs are being applied to in-district programs because they are so much like the statewide programs and it is a way to establish ‘equity’ among the programs. Although it is the main reason for the sweeping changes it is really a very superficial way of looking at the issue. Clearly, the DEED has not examined closely the in-district programs to declare them the ’same.’ As the questioning continued through the afternoon it became very clear that our hosts did not understand how some of these programs actually work and that, in practicalities, they are different.
• DEED considers a statute that refers to a statewide correspondence school as an authorization by the legislature establishing statewide correspondence schools. Clearly, statute refers to a centralized statewide school, specifically the old Alyeska Central School, not districts enrolling students outside their boundary.

So,there are no abuses to be regulated as we expected. Yet, the state will still add another level of regulation and accountability to in-district schools. A charter school with scarce funds already has five levels of accountability at the local level for spending and yet they will also add the State DEED.

Deadline for written Public Comment is May 8th.

What could be the most troubling change is very tiny but very significant. 4 AAC 33.460 will be amended to say that “the department may monitor correspondence study programs to ensure compliance.” So, after all this, the DEED may not even ensure compliance? Using the term ‘may’ instead of ‘will’ means that monitoring can be very subject to political whim. Incredible! Why bother following rules if one has friends in Juneau? Or if a district has enough political clout? This is, potentially, very disturbing policy.

Also very troubling are the number of regulations that conflict with our Charter and charter statute. Clearly, these proposed regulations do not comply with nor reflect the intent of statute.

So, take a look at Frontier’s analysis and let us know what you think by leaving a comment. Remember the last day for submitting written comment to DEED is May 8th.

AHEA has stated on this same page that more than half of the in-district programs are "out of compliance and required more diligent oversight." This is a misunderstanding of the Board’s discussion regarding the ‘highly-qualified’ teacher issue of NCLB. EVERY public homeschool program, local and statewide, is out of compliance with this aspect of NCLB because the parent is the primary instructor not a ‘highly qualified’ teacher as defined by NCLB.

At Frontier we have openly discussed this issue with our Anchorage administration and also the State DEED. These regs do nothing to change any of that and are certainly no path to a solution to the intractable conflict between parents’ rights and NCLB. I suspect that the only resolution will come in the courts and thus regulation is not a place to fight that battle.

The issue of "highly qualified’ teachers is not mention in the DEED’s memo and is being used now to focus attention away from the real issue which is local control and the political nature of these proposed regs.

Regarding the recordings, note that public comment occurred after the vote and those who were commenting were cut off before they had completed their allotted five or three minute periods. I don’t think this was done on purpose but it certainly was an unfair process: no comment allowed before the vote and comment was cut off. Not exactly ‘open and transparent.’

Public comment on the regulations is permitted until May 8, 2008.

Here are the typical reasons given to not regulate the two different types of correspondence schools. As before, my opinions are in italics.

Stated Reasons SWC’s Should Not be Regulated

• Parents should be allowed to spend the money however they want on their own kids’ education. In practice, this is a voucher. Alaska’s constitution clearly states this is not allowed.
• SWC students should be treated equal to in-district students. The 2 types of schools are very different and thus cannot be equal. In many ways they may appear similar but they are very different. This is a big picture concept.
• Homeschool kids do better on testing and so parents should have the freedom to spend however they like. This is clearly false based upon data presented in last September’s work session. Homeschool kids perform comparably to students in traditional classrooms.
• SWC’s provide choice for parents. This is true. However, this is not the path to choice given by the legislature. The legislature determined that charter schools are the way to provide choice and wrote very strong statute to support it. Much greater freedom is obtained with a charter. SWC parents should enroll in one in their local district or start a new one if they do not like the restrictions placed on SWC’s.
• Homeschooling is cheaper and therefore extravagance with public funds is justified since it is still cheaper than educating a student in a brick and mortar school. No matter the dollar amount, unacceptable use of public funds is still wrong.

Reasons In-District Programs Should Not be Regulated

• No specific need or inappropriate practices for regulation stated. The Board’s Memorandum states only that there has been "much public comment." Is that all that is necessary to change regulations and increase the State’s  oversight and to ignore adequate local control.
• Motivation for the proposed packet is unstated and unclear. We don’t know who wrote the proposed regs. Stakeholders had no input into regulation development process as was the case with the current regulations.
• Local School boards already provide LOCAL oversight. This cannot be overstated. LOCAL SCHOOL BOARDS PROVIDING LOCAL OVERSIGHT ALIGNED WITH COMMUNITY STANDARDS AND NEEDS!
• Proposed regs have apparently been written without regard for local policies. In many cases, standards are lowered by state reg. Part of the current regulation was taken directly from Frontier’s Charter. I think we can state the case that an unintended result will be to restrict in-district programs from being creative and innovative.
• SPED services are already provided by local schools for in-district programs.
• Many in-district programs are charter schools approved by the State Board and Local Board. The proposed regs produce de facto charter changes. There is a path to change a charter and it is collaborative not regulatory. This is my big beef. The State Board already blessed our charter now they want a do-over without negotiation or collaboration or grounds and without input from the ASD Board with whom they also have a contract. These regs will likely have the unintended consequence of causing charter schools to close. Again, charters are the path to school choice and curricular freedom granted by the legislature. This Board would ignore that to give favor to districts who want to enroll statewide without legal authority.

The first huge difference is the whole concept of local control. Local control has been affirmed by the United States Supreme Court in Milliken v. Bradley (1974) and is an established part of our national and Alaska’s public education tradition. In application, local control saves the state the laborious task of overseeing, minutely, the operating details of each program by delegating that task to a local district and its community’s standards and needs. The State Board’s proposal completely ignores this established precedent and chooses to regulate individual programs within a district. The issue of local control cannot be overstated. Statewide correspondence schools have zero local control. I’ve written in greater detail on the issue of local control here.

I’ve made a couple lists to illustrate some of the ‘big picture’ differences between our schools. This subject is so complicated I had to find some way to lay out points that had some kind of structure. This proposal package is ‘target-rich.’ Its regulations are inappropriate in numerous ways and even illegal when applied to charter schools.

The proposed regs already apply to statewide schools. The only change for them is an increase in the amount permitted to be spent on fine arts and P.E.

So, here are some reasons I have heard that correspondence schools should be regulated. First, the statewide correspondence schools. I’ve added my own humble opinion in italics.

Reasons Statewide Correspondence Schools Should be Regulated:

• No LEA (local education agency) oversight once enrollment crosses district boundaries. Only the State has statutory authority to oversee statewide schools.
• Motivated by revenue stream and therefore incentive for self-oversight is minimized. These schools want maximum enrollment to generate maximum revenue for their local districts.
• A significant portion, 25%, of the Base Allocation is not spent on the student nor the correspondence school itself. Goes to previous point. Money is not spent where the legislature directed it. This is because there is no local control. Parents cannot even vote for the school board and thus have no voice in how funds are spent.
• Inappropriate uses of public funds documented. These were what brought the public’s attention to this issue and thus the regs that are in place now.
• Lack of compliance with existing regulations. This is anecdotal. Many of us know families in SWC’s who use sectarian mat’ls as their primary curriculum. These are prohibited under the current and proposed regs.
• Special education services are inadequate. It’s tough and expensive to provide these services from a district 800 miles away from its students.

Reasons In-District Programs Should be Regulated

• ‘Much public comment regarding correspondence study programs.’ This is the stated reason in the Board’s memorandum.
• Expectations by those in statewide schools of ‘fairness.’

That’s it. Those are the only two reasons I’ve heard that in-district programs should be regulated. The latter requires real chutzpah. A coarse analogy is one of a squatter living in my backyard demanding the equal access and privileges of family to make it ‘fair.’ The real-life example is the Galena City School District enrolling 860 students within the Anchorage School District (ASD) and wanting a ‘fair’ chance to enroll even more by being given the same privileges as Frontier Charter School and Family Partnership Charter School but without the local control from the ASD School Board nor the community standards applied to the two charters. Keep in mind that Galena is a town of 640 that is 344 air miles from Anchorage without road or rail access. Galena is just one of several statewide schools that enroll within the ASD.

There are no allegations of misuse of public funds nor of mismanagement of the in-district schools. So, why regulate them? The motivation appears to be political. Public comment closes May 8th.

My perspective is as a co-founder of Frontier Charter School which enrolls Anchorage School District students. As such, we object to regulations being extended to in-district programs. These proposed regs dictate permissible curriculum and spending, how learning plans are developed, implemented and tracked. In other words, they detail the administrative, instructional and financial structure of a correspondence school.

Here’s a few points addressing this aspect:

• In the Background portion of the memo the Board presents no evidence showing this additional state regulation of specific schools within an LEA (local educational agency) is necessary. Where is the empirical data?  It looks like a few complainers are all it takes to get the Board to extend regulations into territory it has not regulated before.
• The Board is extending their spending and curriculum regulations to charter schools. We have a charter, a contract, with the Anchorage School District and the State that details how we will operate Frontier Charter School. We went through a very lengthy, tedious public process to have our charter approved and our doors opened. The charter details how we will run Frontier, its accountability and compliance with District policies and State statute. Now, the Board would like to change how our school operates and how we spend our money. This is in direct opposition to our charter and also to state charter school statute. They are requiring de facto changes to our charter without going through the correct legal process of doing so. Changing a charter is a lengthy, tedious, public and cooperative effort with the ASD and Frontier. Again, I add that there is no evidence that this sweeping action is necessary.
• The Board would like to regulate how Frontier chooses curriculum and how much money is spent on what materials. The law and legislative intent is clear. Charter schools have curricular freedom. To dictate how Frontier or any other charter school spends its money on curriculum is at its essence dictating curriculum choices. We have already complied with all statutory requirements and restrictions regarding curriculum. Frontier will not accept additional regulation unsupported by statute without a fight.

It seems these proposed regulations are a politically motivated. The issues related to statewide correspondence schools will not go away until there is an open, transparent discussion of why they exist. Schools such as IDEA and Raven exist to generate revenue for their small, rural school districts. So, while in-district programs compete with one another based upon academic excellence, statewide schools compete for a revenue stream.

The memorandum is here. There will be plenty more comment on these proposed regs to come.