Dunleavy’s Handpicked State Education Board Usurps Local Control - Pearl Creek

Last year, former Anchorage School Superintendent Deena Bishop, now Dunleavy's handpicked DEED Commissioner, traveled to Washington, D.C. to celebrate Donald Trump's order to “facilitate the closure” of the federal Department of Education.

If you're not at all shocked by this, it's because you likely know that Bishop has prioritized her boss's weaponization of charter schools over the needs of traditional neighborhood schools. It is a battle where Bishop has pushed charter school expansion without ensuring adequate public education funding for existing traditional schools, which serve the vast majority of Alaska's students.

Lawmakers have accused Bishop of heavily inflating charter waitlist numbers to justify the administration's policy shifts, and public school advocates note a stark contrast (to say the least) between her past calls for increased funding as a district superintendent and her current deferral of responsibility regarding the Base Student Allocation, which has remained stagnant for more than a decade.

As school districts across Alaska contend with crumbling infrastructure and critical budget shortfalls, Bishop has spent her tenure working to undermine the state's constitutional obligation to support a public education system for every child.

This is all important to know because...

Meanwhile, up in Fairbanks

Last October, the Fairbanks North Star Borough School Board handed down a meticulous 52-page decision rejecting an application for the Pearl Creek STEAM Charter School. It's probably important to note that the application to open the charter school came on the heels of the closing of Pearl Creek Elementary School, one of three schools closed to address a $16 million deficit.

You can read the denial letter yourself, but it's noteworthy that the application lacked a concrete facility plan - relying on a closed school building without a secured lease or alternative location, and failed to include viable plans for student transportation or nutrition.

The school board also noted the charter school's proposed admissions process violated state law by using a tiered lottery that prioritized founders' grandchildren, former students, and volunteers rather than a required random drawing. The application lacked a curriculum for its planned seventh and eighth-grade classes and severely underfunded its special education program, budgeting for just one teacher to support an estimated 70 students with Individualized Education Programs.

The school board said that the application also lacked a viable facility plan. The applicants planned to lease the closed Pearl Creek Elementary building without an actual lease agreement or a realistic maintenance budget. The school district originally closed that specific building partly due to $43 million in deferred capital improvement needs - raising the question - who plans on eating that?

Compounding these operational issues, wrote the school board, were material errors in the charter school's fiscal plan, which underestimated facility costs, omitted a $192,000 principal salary from staffing totals, and relied heavily on crowdsourcing volunteers instead of budgeting for essential staff like custodians and school nurses.

Additionally, the applicants requested unjustified exemptions from standard board policies, including those governing building security and the prohibition of deadly weapons. (That's a weird one).

The school board posited that standing up the Pearl Creek STEAM Charter School would inflict a $2.8 million fiscal blow to the district for the 2027 fiscal year. That is a dollar figure that would be enough to lower class sizes across the District by 2 students per classroom improving the educational experience for students of all ages District-wide.

Signing off on the application would likely drain essential resources directly from existing neighborhood schools. The Fairbanks North Star School District, like every other school district in the state, is already dealing with severe budget constraints and facility closures. Siphoning millions to prop up a hastily rushed charter school seems incredibly fiscally irresponsible.

Enter Dr. Deena Bishop

Unsurprisingly, none of the issues raised in the application denial mattered to DEED Commissioner Deena Bishop or Governor Dunleavy's handpicked Alaska Board of Education members - who steamrolled the locally elected Fairbanks School Board in an effort to usurp the school board's authority and approve the charter's application in a secretive executive session. They held no public debate nor did they offer the opportunity for the public to provide comment. They simply popped out from their closed-door meeting and issued a letter overturning the Fairbanks School Board's unanimous application rejection.

Last month, Dermot Cole spelled out the egregiousness of the state board's action in a piece aptly titled, "Dunleavy now claims all charter school applications must be approved."

In it, he takes the Dunleavy administration to task for asserting that local school boards must approve any correctly completed charter school application. Cole correctly states that this new interpretation of state law is an unconstitutional overreach that strips local districts of their ability to reject applications based on negative financial impacts or a low likelihood of success. He describes this new mandate as an effort by the governor to undermine locally elected officials and distort state law for political purposes.

I'd only add that the clear spirit of the statute, which gives the State Board of Education the right to hear appeals, was to occur in case of an oversight by the sponsoring school district. If the law required all charter applications to be approved based solely on the application being filled out “correctly” (and the Pearl Creek app was *not* structurally sound, apparently), the law wouldn’t have been written the way it was.

But...Dunleavy gonna Dunleavy and as a result, the Fairbanks school district says it's going to sue the state over the debacle.

For the record, acknowledging the disaster that is the state overturning the Pearl Creek application is not an indictment of charter schools themselves. I have consistently advocated for educators and the preservation of a robust public education system dating all the way back to the COVID era.

It's the blatant disregard for local control and the fiscal reality of our school districts. While some proponents of this specific proposed charter take to social media to act like lunatics and launch personal attacks against those with a differing opinion, they do so ignoring the fact that a school cannot run on crowdsourced custodians and illegal admissions tiers.

This isn't a fight against "choice"—it’s a defense against a MAGA-aligned administration that is willing to bankrupt local districts and ignore the law simply to score cheap political points. If the courts don't step in to restore the authority of our locally elected boards, the Dunleavy administration will continue to mistreat our children’s education in furtherance of its divisive, partisan political agenda.