Dunleavy administration’s plan to create ‘education advocacy’ office includes investigating school complaints
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) -The State Board of Education & Early Development is holding a 30-day public comment period on the Dunleavy Administration’s proposal to create what the administration’s calling an “Office of Education Advocacy,” which would include the power to investigate complaints about school districts.
According to the proposed regulations, a parent, student, educator, individual, or educational organization may file a complaint with the office to allege that a school district has failed to comply with an education law or regulation that is enforceable by the department.
The allegation must have occurred within six months.
The office would have the authority to launch an investigation into the complaint. If it finds that a district is out of compliance, the department could withhold state funding from the district.
“We actually have many complaint processes already that we have for different laws that are on the books and the one particular one that is referenced in those associated with the Office of Education Advocacy, is actually the language that is in law by the Reads Act,” Bishop said. “There’s a provision that says the laws of Alaska must be followed, and so when they’re not what do you do? And in that law, in the law that the legislature passed, it says that funds may be redirected.”
Education commissioner Deena Bishop said the office’s creation is not a response to state non-compliance issues, insisting it is solely meant to streamline the process. She also said the state’s ability to investigate complaints is not new.
“The administration of the Department of Education Early Development is the compliance agency for the education laws of Alaska. So we make the reports back to the legislature. We make the reports back to the federal government, ensuring that money is spent how it’s supposed to be,” Bishop said. “However I see that we could really empower districts and support districts and families and students and employees if we had a customer service focus as well.”
Lon Garrison executive director of the Association of Alaska School Boards had an “inkling” that, you know, there might be something in the works based on recent events at the legislature this past session, but the creation of an Office of Education Advocacy was “news” to him.
“It just seems that this particular the way they’re moving forward with this is more, in my mind, a little bit more overt in saying, hey, you know, come to us and if you have any problem at a district, you know, if we think there’s something wrong, we’re going to investigate and hold the school district accountable. So, you know, it would be good to work proactively together on these kinds of things,” Garrison said. “This would have probably been a good thing for the commissioner and I to have a conversation about in terms of trying to make sure that we’re supporting school boards and and administrators and trying to solve the problems as close to home as possible. And so it gives me a little pause that we have this moving forward.”
Anchorage School board president Andy Holleman said he thinks this could work if done right.
“I think DEED providing an alternate pathway for parents to challenge local district decisions and collaborate on solutions could be a very valuable thing, done in the right way. DEED has a lot of expertise they help bring to bear on solutions for certain problems,” Holleman said.
Documents presented to the state board of education also say the office would create a centralized point of contact and provide information.
Referring to it as “customer service,” Bishop said creating the office is an attempt to cut down on having to send questions back to local school districts.
“What we want to do is, you know, redirect them and help them find it at their local district because that’s where a lot of the supports are. But if people you know can’t find information, we want to help them find it,” Bishop said. “What are all the charter schools in Alaska? What are my neighborhood schools? Are there any immersion schools? So anything that a parent could possibly come and ask.”
Bishop said the goal is to have inquiries responded to within 24 hours, and she is currently hiring a full-time person to run the office instead of relying on part-time help, which is currently what is happening.
“There’s a rotation of employees from our different divisions that rotate to answer the phone, so there isn’t one single person that you know has an understanding or a responsibility to be able to, you know, facilitate, you know. So we keep a log of like this call came in, I transferred it over here …this log started this year…so I literally started to notice, how do we know when we’ve resolved an issue,” Bishop said.
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