Students around the state walked out on Thursday morning (4-4-24), calling for the legislature to take action on a proposal to increase school funding. In Sitka, students at Mt. Edgecumbe High School and Sitka High School took to the parking lots to protest the governor’s veto of a bill that would have boosted state funding for public schools.
Shortly after 11 a.m. around 100 Sitka High School students walked out of their school building, crowding around the front entrance.
Student body President Edward Richards addressed them:
“Unfortunately, despite students like us and hundreds of others who are currently walking out of their schools across Alaska knowing the crises our schools are facing, those at the very top cannot hear us,” Richards said. “We have spoken up at the legislature and those in power that without an increase to the base student allocation, our programs will be cut, our classroom sizes will skyrocket, and opportunities will vanish. But it seems words are insufficient.”
In mid-March, Governor Mike Dunleavy vetoed Senate Bill 140 – the first significant bipartisan increase to the base student allocation, or BSA, in years. Then, the state legislature failed to override the veto by a single vote.
Richards told KCAW that by failing to override the veto, the Alaska Legislature had not fulfilled its constitutional obligation to adequately fund schools.
“I will say we are lucky here in thinking to have such a supportive community around our education. But I mean, in some of the rural schools, they’re dealing with asbestos and black mold within their schools,” Richards said. “You can’t even argue that’s inadequate, because that’s just unsafe.”
Earlier this year, students traveled to Juneau to lobby the legislature for a funding increase. Junior Jasmine Wolfe was one of them.
“While I was there, again and again my voice was just sometimes being heard, sometimes it was not, and I was just repeating myself over and over again,” Wolfe said. “And the hope with this statewide walkout is that all over the state, kids all the way from Utqiagvik down to Thorne Bay, our voices are being heard.”
Across Sitka’s O’Connell Bridge, about a hundred other students gathered in the parking lot of Mt. Edgecumbe High School – Alaska’s state-run boarding school. Student Graden Baker held a homemade cardboard sign that read, “Kids, not cuts.” Baker is worried that courses like welding and EMT certification will be cut.
“If we lose this funding, then those classes could possibly shut down, and that’s ultimately ruining my future and how I’m going to live my life,” Baker said. “So I’d just like to say, Governor Dunleavy, please don’t do this.”
A few feet away, junior Gale McCrary held a sign that read, “Don’t cut my future,” with a drawing of scissors. McCrary, who is from the village of Noorvik, skipped Japanese class to protest today.
“The whole reason many of the people here came to Mt. Edgecumbe is we came for a better education than we could receive in our home village,” McCrary said. “It’s really important to me that Mt. Edgecumbe, and honestly every public school, has the funding, so they can give kids what they need.”
McCrary said that SB 140 would allow the school to keep teachers and purchase much-needed supplies — and gestured to the sea of cardboard signs to illustrate that point.
“There’s black outlines for letters but they’re not colored in, and that was really ironic to me because while I was making the signs for this protest, I was using markers, you know, materials that have not been replaced in years,” McCrary said.
Back at Sitka High, Edward Richards told classmates that the walkout should be the beginning of their organizing work, not the end.
“Let the statement of solidarity move the conversation forward,” he said. “Let us make it clear that the students of Alaska believe in education and we are willing to fight for it.”
After forty minutes – the number of votes needed to override the governor’s veto – students in Sitka, and across the state, filed away their signs and returned to class.
