Students in Anchorage, Eagle River and Juneau protest Alaska's failure to enact a statewide education funding bill on April 4, 2024.
Eagle River senior Caitlin Corbett, 17, said she was worried most about the future impacts of flat funding, and said she has already noticed an uptick in class sizes since her freshman year.“I know our class sizes have gotten dramatically bigger already,” said Corbett, who added that her largest classes have 40 students in them. “That’s ridiculous, kids can’t learn in that environment,” she said.
Around 125 students at Bettye Davis East Anchorage High School participated in a walkout to protest Alaska’s failure to enact a statewide education funding bill. East High senior Dorothy Armstrong, 17, said she found out about the protest a day earlier while scrolling through Instagram. In Utqiaġvik, about 20 Barrow High School students also walked out of class to show their support for more education funding.
Students and supporters walk from Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé to the state Capitol on Thursday in Juneau. They marched to the Capitol as part of a student walkout to protest Gov. Dunleavy's veto of an education package last month and the Legislature's failure to override that veto. After the hearing finished, a group of students spoke to Anchorage Republican Rep. Julie Coulombe about why she voted to sustain the governor’s veto. Coulombe said she supported a permanent education funding increase, but she was concerned the governor would veto school funding from the budget.
“What I see with the BSA increase is not the adding of new things, it’s the hanging-on-by-a-thread to things we do have,” Myers said, adding that his district risks losing many of its teachers, programs and activities without a funding increase.