Yesterday morning in the House Education Committee, Gov. Sean Parnell’s omnibus education bill received criticism over a portion that would provide transportation to charter school students.
Rep. Paul Seaton of Homer was concerned the bill would take money from the public school district’s transportation funds.
Rep. Seaton: “And now we’re going to destroy the transportation system because we’re pulling money out of it and it really isn’t spent equally per student. the per student nature of that was solely to find some way of constraining the growth of transportation systems in a district based on their historic pattern.”
Susan McCauley of the Alaska Department of Education said the bill was geared to provide some sort of basic transportation for charter school students however some of the terminology was unclear and could be misinterpreted.
Friday the committee will hear more about two similar charter school bills and is scheduled to amend the Governor’s education bill Monday.
