As the state looked the other way, school districts set up their own private school voucher programs
Alaska school districts did not call it a voucher system for private schools, but that’s what some of them have created, using a system that a state judge has declared unconstitutional.
Few of the districts have spelled out the working details so clearly as the CyberLynx Homeschool & Correspondence Program based in Nenana and largely state funded.
It had about 1,500 students statewide in 2022-2023, according to the Alaska Policy Forum, which promotes using state funds for private tuition. The school provides a $2,700 allotment for every student.
In a staff memo two years ago, after the wife of the attorney general signaled that it was acceptable, the CyberLynx principal said that families wishing to enroll in a private K-12 school could do so “and be reimbursed for their private school tuition up to the amount of their student allotment.”
“In order to achieve this, parents must fill out the enrollment form as normal and then create the PER with the contact teacher,” Principal Brian Rozell wrote on May 17, 2022.
PER means “personal education report,” the form the district uses that provides the official connection to the public entity. Other districts call it an ILP or “individualized learning program.”
“This PER meeting might be brief since most private school families already have a known plan for their child’s education. PER meetings could take place over the phone, via Zoom or in person,” Rozell said.
“For example, if a student is attending a private school full time, we could list the following on our PER: language arts, math, science, social studies,” he said. “And that would be sufficient for full-time enrollment. As vendor-graded courses, the curriculum for each of the above courses would be the name of the private school.”
“Specifically religious courses such as “Bible” or “Religious Doctrine” should not be listed on PER even if they are taking those classes at a private school. All private schools are being treated the same, whether they are religious or non-religious private schools,” Rozell said.
“Since the annual tuition for most private schools is beyond our annual student allotment, families would likely utilize all of their allotment for tuition reimbursement, and there would be no other reimbursement requests for other lessons or purchases and no need to list additional classes such as art, music, or PE, even though the student may be taking those classes with the private school or doing those activities on their own.”
“If the private school tuition was less than our annual allotment, and families wanted to use our allotment for activities such as music lessons, dance lessons, etc., then those classes would need to be listed on the PER,” he wrote.
“At this time, this is a parent reimbursement situation. After enrollment, parents can bring their tuition statement, class schedule, and payment receipt, and we will reimburse them up to their annual allotment. We may look into direct payments to private schools in the future.”
Rozell said this approach is what he believes is allowed under the 2014 law championed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy when he was a legislator. He said he doesn’t consider it a plan that CyberLynx developed or needed to get approval on from the state.
He said his district did this only after seeing “larger school districts embracing this practice during the 21-22 school year.”
Rozell said that the 2022 public campaign by Jodi Taylor, wife of the attorney general, to promote state funds for private schools was not the “sole reason for our change in practice, it was the final confirmation or validation of what we were seeing other larger districts doing.”
While the wife of the attorney general was not a state official, the assertion that the state would be paying most of the tuition for two of the attorney general’s children sent a clear message to school districts that the Dunleavy administration was looking the other way.
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