Alaska’s relationship with the United States Department of Education has been on shaky ground lately – and in this, Alaska has plenty of company. This has a couple of parts; first, the Department of Education singled out Alaska for the way the state distributed COVID-19 education relief funds. Must Read Alaska (MRAK) has the story.
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When Covid relief funds were distributed to states in 2021, Alaska officials directed those funds to districts according to the state’s lawful formula.
Earlier this year, Alaska Department of Education Commissioner Deena Bishop was sent a stern letter from the U.S. Department of Education, accusing it of not distributing the funds according to the fed’s “equity” test. The federal department said it would withhold $17.4 million from the state and put it on a “high-risk grantee” list unless the state distributed the funds according to the federal equity formula that has been enacted during the Biden Administration.
The ED, in time, backed down.
Alaska was singled out as the only state put on the federal Department of Education’s naughty list, for not meeting the novel “equity requirements” for use of the funds.
But at the time, Commissioner Bishop wrote, “Alaska’s appropriations complied with the plain language and clear intent of Congress when it passed ARPA and its MOEquity provision; state funding for education was not cut for low-income or any other students during fiscal years 2019-2023 in order to take advantage of new federal funding; instead, Alaska continued to apply its equalized funding formula as required by ARPA.”
Now, as news reporters have all gone off to celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Festivus, and Kwanzaa, the U.S. Department of Education has quietly backpedaled, issuing a new letter.
The gist of the letter is “never mind.”
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One would think that story would end there, right? The U.S. Department of Education probably did.
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The story hasn’t ended there, as Must Read Alaska shared:
Since MRAK’s report (on the COVID grant issue described above), [Alaska Governor Mike] Dunleavy has issued a statement:
“Today marks the end of a saga the Biden-Harris administration started that was a tremendous waste of time and resources. From the very beginning, it was clear that the U.S. Department of Education’s allegations were meritless. Alaska was not going to back down because we knew we were right,” he said. “On the bright side, this saga is a wonderful case study of the U.S. Department of Education’s abuse of power and serves as further evidence for why I support the concept of eliminating it.”
Gov. Dunleavy isn’t alone in this assessment.
Here’s the thing: Not only is the very existence of the U.S. Department of Education actually prohibited by the 10th Amendment, even were it not for the constitutional argument, there is damn little reason for Washington to be involved in education. Through the vast sweep of the nation’s history, education was a local thing, handled at the municipal or county level.
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This COVID “relief funds” hooraw is a perfect example of overbearing and wasteful government; in this exercise, Washington took taxpayer money from the citizenry – with the implied threat of force, I might add, and if you don’t believe that, try not paying your taxes and see how long it takes the IRS to send men with guns out looking for you. Washington took this taxpayer money, filtered it through a dozen or more layers of bureaucracy, then dribbled some of it back out to the states as “COVID relief funds.”
It would have been much more efficient to have let the states handle it – or better yet, get the government out of education altogether.
We can hope that Gov. Dunleavy is in touch with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. This is, again, a great target for the DOGE. Swing those axes!
