Editor 
Students (16-17) and teacher in classroom
By DAVID BOYLE
Alaska Superior Court Adolf Zeman’s decision to shut down the Alaska correspondence program created a firestorm among correspondence school parents.
Now the Alaska Senate is attempting to rewrite laws to limit correspondence schools’ parents the freedom to educate their children.
Senate Bill 266 is an effort to crush the current correspondence school program in which parents have enrolled more than 22,000 students. The Senate, led by Sen. Loki Tobin and Sen. Bill Wielechowski, seems to have taken the lead from the NEA-AK in writing the bill.
Ironically, these two senators have most of the worst schools in the Anchorage School District. Why would they not want more public school opportunities for students in their districts? Wouldn’t these senators want their constituents’ kids to be able to attend a public correspondence program?
In its response to Judge Zeman’s decision, the teachers’ union has rewritten the State of Alaska’s regulations setting out the rules for correspondence schools.
It’s surprising how similar the language in the proposed senate bill SB 266 is to what the National Education Association-Alaska submitted to the judge for the rewrite of the regulations for correspondence schools. Some would call it plagiarism.
Here are some of the striking similarities comparing the NEA-AK regulation rewrite to SB 266:
| NEA-AK | SB 266 |
| The correspondence school district must require students to participate in the statewide tests. A mandate to parents. | Mandates correspondence students take the statewide assessment test. Requires correspondence school districts to provide the test scores of their students to the state. Deletes the freedom of a parent to remove a child from the state’s statewide tests. A mandate to parents. |
| A parent may spend public funds to pay a private individual for tutoring in the fine arts, music, or physical education. But that cannot be given by a private or sectarian educational institution. Guess the state can pick and choose what is and isn’t “private”. | A parent may use an allotment to pay a private organization for tutoring in fine arts, music, or physical education. The state can determine what is a “private” educational organization. But the parent cannot pay a private educational organization for tutoring in the core subjects such as math, reading, the sciences? |
| A parent may not use the allotment to buy uniforms or physical education equipment. That includes barbells, exercise mats and other small PE equipment. | A parent may not buy physical education equipment. That leaves out barbells, exercise mats, etc. |
| 4. A correspondence program may not pay for, reimburse for, or provide money for: religious, partisan, sectarian, or denominational textbooks/materials; physical education equipment; items that are considered excessive by the school administrator; tuition, instruction, or any other expense from a religious or private educational institution. | Student allotments cannot be used to pay for services or materials provided by a private or religious educational institution.Student allotments cannot be used to pay for religious, partisan, sectarian or denominational textbooks or other curriculum materials. Tutoring may not be provided by a religious or private educational institution. |
The NEA-AK goes to the extreme and mandates “The correspondence program must provide, and require parents to sign, a written statement that they understand, and will abide by, the requirements of the assessment program.” Whatever happened to freedom, privacy, and choice?
And the teachers’ union does not stop there. It wants transcripts of correspondence students’ courses that they paid for themselves! Here is the quote from their emergency regulation rewrite: “A transcript that includes the source of any course taken by the student that was not offered or approved by the governing body of the district…and for which no public money was provided…”.
And SB 266 goes even further. It requires correspondence school districts to provide demographic information on their students.
Parents cannot use their allotment funds to pay for testing by private organizations. A parent cannot pay Sylvan Learning Center or any other private educational organization for testing their child.
Here’s the real kicker: Parents can no longer roll over their fund balances at the end of the school year. Their unspent allotment funds go back to the school districts to enrich their coffers.
Both SB 266 and the teachers’ union rewrite of correspondence school regulations want to shut down opportunities for students to learn outside the brick & mortar schools. The education industry is losing thousands of students to the correspondence school programs. They also lose millions of dollars when a student goes from a neighborhood school to a correspondence school.
And when the education industry loses students, it loses power. It loses control.
Here is one parent’s comment that summarizes the situation, “I’m wondering if that’s the plan. To make EVERYTHING but state curriculum to be from a “private organization” and not able to be used for allotment. A way to force people into the state curriculum”.
