JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — The Alaska Supreme Court is considering a case challenging as unconstitutional laws that allowed families with children in home-schooling programs to use public funds for education-related expenses at private schools.
The court heard the arguments in Anchorage on Thursday, more than two months after Supreme Court Justice Adolf Zeman sided with a group of parents and teachers who filed the lawsuit.
At the heart of the case are provisions of a state law passed a decade ago that allow families with children in distance learning programs to receive thousands of dollars annually in reimbursement for tuition-related costs.
The allocations came under criticism after Jodi Taylor, wife of Attorney General Treg Taylor, wrote an opinion piece in 2022 about “a previously hidden opportunity for families to use their children’s education funds” to pay for private school tuition and other educational options.
Zeman ruled in April that the provisions were “crafted with the express purpose of allowing the purchase of private educational services using public distance learning allotments for students.” He said this contradicts Alaska’s Constitution, which prohibits public funds from being paid “for the direct benefit of a religious or other private educational institution.”
Lawyers for the state asked the Supreme Court to overturn Zeman’s ruling, arguing, among other things, that the ruling was too broad. Lawyers for parents who had used their allotments to pay their children’s tuition at private schools and intervened in the case said the allotments were a direct benefit to the families, not the private schools. They say parents have a federal right to choose a private school.
The legislature had no obligation to create a distance learning option, Kirby Thomas West, an attorney with the Institute for Justice representing the intervening parents, said in court Thursday. “But having done it, having said we’re going to allow you to use this allotment benefit … to do a wide range of things, including home schooling, tutoring, books, curriculum, all kinds of things, the state cannot — as the Supreme Court interpretation would — then say, all but one thing, except send your children to private school.”
The Supreme Court gave no indication Thursday as to when it would make its decision.
More than 22,000 students attend distance learning, a form of home schooling sponsored by local school districts. For families in remote areas of Alaska, it may be an option, but some families in more urban areas also choose distance learning as an alternative to traditional neighborhood schools. The allotments can be used for things like physical or speech therapy for students with special needs, or to help pay for some college courses, according to court documents.
The case concerns provisions of a 2014 law that requires districts with distance learning to provide individualized learning plans for distance learners. Parents can use the allotments to purchase “non-sectarian services and materials from a public, private or religious organization” if those services or materials are necessary for the child’s learning plan and meet other standards, such as approval by the school district and support of “a public purpose.”
Those provisions, which Zeman declared unconstitutional, came from a bill introduced by then-Senator and current Governor Mike Dunleavy. The Republican – a former teacher and school administrator who advocates for greater school choice and parental involvement in education – had also proposed a companion constitutional amendment that would have allowed public funds to flow to private or religious schools. However, that amendment failed due to a lack of support.
Jodi Taylor said in her 2022 opinion piece that two of her children attended a private school in Anchorage at the time and were also enrolled in a distance learning program through the Anchorage School District. She said she planned to request that the children’s allocation funds be used to pay tuition at the private school, which she said was an approved distance learning provider. However, it was not clear whether that happened.
Two months after the article was published, the Justice Department, led by Treg Taylor, released a legal opinion on allotments, written by Assistant Attorney General Cori Mills, which said that using allotments to pay most or all of a child’s tuition at a private school was “almost certainly unconstitutional,” but that under certain circumstances they could be used to pay for certain classes at a private school that supported a child’s home education. Treg Taylor had recused himself from the matter.
However, the attorney general said that after filing the lawsuit in 2023, he sought ethics advice that ultimately led to his participation in the case. By email this week, he said the ethics advice was confidential, and he did not respond to questions about his children’s schooling.
The state has sought outside help in the case, signing a contract worth up to $100,000 with attorney Elbert Lin, a former West Virginia attorney general, who argued the state’s case Thursday. Texas-based First Liberty Institute, a self-described religious liberty legal organization, is providing pro bono legal advice in the case “and any subsequent appeals,” according to contracts released by the Alaska Department of Law.
In response to Zeman’s decision, state lawmakers passed a bill earlier this year with provisions aimed at providing stability for distance learners during the legal process. The move came near the end of a contentious legislative session in which they clashed with Dunleavy over public school funding.
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