2019/2020 Priorties

Alaska PTA 2019-2020 Legislative Priorities

2019 Legislative Priorities, as determined during Alaska PTA’s Legislative Issues Conference, December 2017

• The Alaska PTA supports making funding education a top priority for the State. Education funding should be adequate, equitable, stable, and budgeted with transparency at all levels in how that funding is spent.

• The Alaska PTA supports structurally sound schools throughout the state for the safety of children, families, staff and communities.

• The Alaska PTA supports air quality monitoring with mitigation of harmful indoor pollution in schools where needed, as needed.

• The Alaska PTA supports the development and funding of health and welfare programs that address ACES (Adverse Childhood Experiences).

• Obesity

• Domestic violence

• Bullying

• Substance abuse

• Suicide prevention

• Asthma

• The Alaska PTA supports funding to increase engagement of families and communities in the education system and enhance early learning throughout Alaska. These programs would include educating new parents, parents as teachers program, public pre-K and gifted programs.

• The Alaska PTA supports that every child in Alaska, with special consideration for rural areas, has access to quality educators that can deliver quality, face-to-face, culturally responsive, respectful, hands-on learning opportunities.

• Talking point: Whereas we all know technology can never replace a quality educator, and we do support a technological infrastructure and bandwidth that gives all students access to testing for graduation and higher education requirements.

• Our current budget situation is not sustainable, and can only be stabilized through new sources of general fund revenue. Alaska PTA supports a long-term fiscal plan for Alaska that includes new sources of general fund revenue.

• The Alaska PTA supports legislation that requires the consideration of the short and long-term relevancy, financial costs and contract length, time commitment, continuity, and purpose of state – and federally – mandated testing.

• The Alaska PTA supports continued funding for small school enrollment of ten or greater.

• The Alaska PTA supports legislation that supports teachers as professional, utilizes an evaluation system that is unbiased and based on classroom instructional performance which is not used in punitive manner, and trains teachers in disabilities and culturally respectful and responsive practices.

• The Alaska PTA supports legislation that supports teachers as professionals, giving them autonomy to teach the subject matter using their own methods.

• The Alaska PTA support sufficient time and resources prior to implementation at the school level whenever a statewide assessment is mandated or significantly modified to allow for reasonably equitable and valid results.

Talking Points:

• Test results should be relevant to student leaving with results readily available to schools, parents and teachers.

• Need for strong intervention strategies to increase academic proficiencies.

• Staff should be provided appropriate professional development.

• Student learning time should be minimally impacted.

• ELL students need sufficient support to be realistically addressed.

• The Alaska PTA supports legislation that seeks to improve outcome and graduation rates of our diverse student populations in the State of Alaska.

Talking Points:

• The Alaska Native population has one of the lowest graduation rates.

• Also includes special needs – both high and low.

• Include all islanders.

• All other data that doesn’t cover these ethnicities.

• The Alaska PTA supports legislation that ensures that public funds go to public schools.

• The Alaska PTA supports legislation that requires teachers to be trained on disabilities and positive behavior modifications.

• The Alaska PTA supports legislation investigating the relationship between decreased funding and poor access and criminality. Charge the state legislature with re-evaluating efforts to decrease incarcerations rates by funding quality education.

• The Alaska PTA supports quality early learning and family strengthening programs to ensure every child starts school ready to learn.

Please note that these priorities are not listed in any particular order.