Hundreds of Soldotna High School students walked out Wednesday in protest of stagnant state education funding and the Gov. Mike Dunleavy's veto of a bill that would have increased funding earlier this spring.
At 10 a.m. Wednesday morning, a bustling crowd of Soldotna High School students gathered outside the school. They chanted in support of a raise to the Base Student Allocation or BSA — the amount of funding the state provides per student. That amount hasn’t meaningfully increased in years, and the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District is budgeting for major cuts to staff and programs as a result.
“To know that we’re all seniors, talking to you, and there’s a senior that put this together, I think it can tell how important it is to us,” said student Charisma Watkins, holding a sign that said “Our Teachers. Our Students. Our Children. Our Future.”
“Even though we’re literally leaving, we’re literally leaving in three weeks, having education is just so important,” Watkins said.
Senior Caitlin Babcock said it’s not just about students.
“We want teachers to actually want to come to the KPBSD, and teach, and teach our future generations, and not just want to leave because they’re not being paid enough to do what they’re doing,” Babcock said.
Senior JLee Webster organized the walkout. Many schools around the state, including Homer High School, held walkouts on April 4. But Webster said that day coincided with a school activities assembly, so it wasn’t possible to organize a protest. When planning this week’s walkout, however, she said it spread like wildfire on social media.
“I didn’t think that we’d have such a big turnout as we did, I thought we were only gonna have like 15 or 20 people, but as we were walking through the hallways, whole classes were walking out,” Webster said. “I’m just so proud of my school.”
She said she might have expected students involved in certain extracurriculars to turn out in strong support — the district’s school board approved a budget Monday that makes cuts to theaters — but she was heartened to see a strong cross section of students.
“I see a lot of people that maybe don’t do music or don’t do theater that are out here, a lot of the football people, and baseball, and it just shows that even if many of our sports people may not be open about it, they do support our arts,” Webster said.
She asked the crowd of students to send her any photos or videos taken at the protest.
“I’m going to be emailing these to all of our legislators, especially the ones who voted against the veto,” she announced to cheers.
Rep. Ben Carpenter of Nikiski and Rep. Sarah Vance of Homer voted against an override of the Governor’s veto in March. The override failed by just one vote.
The State House passed a budget with the equivalent of a $680 increase to the BSA last week. The budget is now working its way through the Senate, where members have expressed support for an increase in school funding.
The Kenai Peninsula school board approved a budget with $7.8 million in cuts, while hoping a legislative funding increase will allow them to bring back any reductions.
