A few dozen students streamed out of the front doors of Bethel Regional High School (BRHS) into the blistering wind. Red hats, shirts, and sweatshirts were dotted through the crowd:
“What do we want?” called one as they walked.
“Money!” came the response.
“When do we want it?”
“Now!”
Students passed out flyers and signs emblazoned with phrases in red ink like: “Prioritize education,” and “We care about our education.”
“We believe that our education is important and it should not be put as, like, something to do later,” said junior Morgan Wuya, who shivered outside the school in a maroon sweatshirt. The wind whipped at the hand-lettered paper sign she held, which read: “Prioritize My Education.”
“If there is something that we need to support, it's the future generations that are coming,” Wuya said. “Because if we want to make anything better it's going to take some time, and that's in the hands of the next generations coming as well.”
Junior Isaiah Stuart said that he sees education as the foundation of the country, which should make it a priority for the state as well. “I see a lot of things in this school that need to be taken care of,” Stuart said, “And I believe it's very important.”
Stuart said that it’s important for the state to listen to the voices of students and fund their futures. “Take a look at Alaska's geopolitical and geographical location. It is a strategic place,” he said. “We, the students here, could be very important people in the future. We could be stationed here in Alaska.”
Alaska lawmakers passed a $246 million permanent increase to state education funding in late February, which included a $680 increase to the state’s per-student funding formula, called the base student allocation (BSA) But Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed the bill, although the majority of Alaskans support a “large” increase to the per-student funding.
In a written statement on April 4, Gov. Dunleavy’s office wrote: “Governor Dunleavy supports and encourages all Alaskans to exercise their First Amendment rights. The governor has said numerous times he supports a BSA increase, but that money alone will not improve Alaska’s educational outcomes. Our public schools need educational reform legislation. Alaska’s public charter schools are the best in the nation and there are waiting lists of students hoping to enter a charter school. Those students and their parents can see the advantages charter schools provide. There is no greater form of local control than giving parents more options for their children’s education.”
The Legislature failed to override that veto by one vote.
The base student allocation hasn’t increased significantly since 2017, while inflation and other costs absorbed by schools have ticked upward. Students throughout the state walked out of class on April 4 at 11 a.m. to protest.
It’s part of a series of protests in support of education. Hundreds of students, teachers, and community members have staged protests at the capitol and throughout the state in support of increased education funding over the past couple of years, as meaningful increases to state education funding have failed or fallen short of keeping up with inflation.
Eleven high school-aged students from the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program (ANSEP) Acceleration Academy in Bethel also came out to show their support for education funding. They walked more than a mile through slush and standing water to the high school, getting honks and cheers from passing cars along the way.
“We're at a time where [education funding] needs to be raised,” said 12th-grader Maya Komulainen. “And we need to try to get better education for not just us here in Bethel, but all over Alaska and in the villages.”
Komulainen explained the timing of the protest: “We're supposed to be out here for 40 minutes. Each minute represents the amount of votes that was required for the legislation to go through again. We'll walk until we reach our 40 minutes.”
Bethel’s representative in the state legislature supports student protest. Bethel Democrat Rep. C.J. McCormick spoke during discussions on the education funding bill on Feb. 22. He’s the youngest member of the Alaska legislature and graduated from Bethel Regional High School in 2016.
“I graduated Bethel Regional High School one year before the last base student allocation increase,” McCormick said. “And at that point in time, going through school, well, I know now I had it better than than children going through the educational system now. There still were so many opportunities that we did not have.”
McCormick responded to statements from other representatives that kids were “props” or that it was unacceptable for them to protest.
“Those young people have every right to articulate the experience that they're going through; we have an obligation to listen to them,” McCormick said. “They're as much experts as we are, as teachers are. They live in consequence of our policy.”
After marching to the flagpoles outside the school and taking a group photo, BRHS students jogged back inside after around 10 minutes to escape the whipping, freezing wind.
Although brief, ANSEP 12th-grader Jordan Klejka said the event was a success.
“I think it went pretty well. The weather’s pretty treacherous, which I think shows how dedicated we are,” Klejka said. “You know a lot of us have our feet soaked, but we still do it anyway, ‘cause it matters.”
“‘Cause we’re Warriors!” chimed in ANSEP student Sally Peters.
