Alaska Deputy Attorney General Cori Mills released an opinion from the state Department of Law on whether publicly funded correspondence schools can pay for services from private schools. Mills said public money may be spent for discrete materials and services from a private school when doing so supports a public correspondence education, but the Alaska Constitution doesn’t permit public allotment funds to pay tuition for full-time enrollment.
The 19-page opinion also clarifies that none of the recent U.S. Supreme Court cases on education funding change the analysis because the Alaska Constitution doesn’t distinguish based on religion but on the basis of private vs. public. According to the Alaska Department of Law, the opinion provides guidance on the types of spending that is constitutional, unconstitutional and those that fall into the gray area.
Mills wrote:
“This conclusion is not changed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decisions interpreting the federal Free Exercise Clause; nor are those decisions likely to invalidate Alaska’s restriction on using public correspondence allotments only for nonsectarian services and materials.”
Legislation was enacted nearly 10 years ago which permitted districts to “provide an annual student allotment to a parent or guardian of a student enrolled in the correspondence study program for the purpose of meeting instructional expenses for the student.” Spending these funds for the benefit of a private educational institution, according to the Alaska Constitution, is prohibited, which led to questions regarding if allotments can be used to cover materials and services from private schools.
Regarding the use of correspondence school allotments, Mills summarized by saying:
“The allotment program supports students enrolled in public correspondence schools by permitting a limited amount of public money to be spent for materials and services from a private vendor to fulfill a student’s individual learning plan. Such spending does not, on its face, violate the Alaska Constitution’s prohibition against spending public funds for the direct benefit of a private educational institution. The nature of the private educational institution providing the materials or services does not impact this conclusion. Neither the Alaska Constitution nor the statutes make any distinction between religious or non-religious educational institutions and online or in-person education.”
The opinion does clarify that “the constitution does not permit supplanting public education with private school education by using public allotment funds to pay tuition for full-time enrollment in a private school.”
Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor had to recuse himself from the opinion to prevent potential for bias.
Click here to read the entire letter.