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The Michael Dukes Show, streaming live across the world. Live around the world on the internet at michaeldukeshow.com, where you'll find links to everything, including the... Audio only stream, the podcasts, the websites, the social media sites where we simulcast the show and more. And of course, live around the state of Alaska on this. Your favorite radio station and or FM translator. Hello, my friends, and good morning to you on this bright and beautiful Thursday. It is.
This week is just, oh man, the days, they just go screaming by, screaming by. Welcome back to the program. And thank you for coming in and joining us today. We have got but we've we've got a slew of stuff to talk about. And I think we just want I just want to riff this morning. I've just got you know, sometimes I wake up and I'm like, OK.
wanted to talk about this, this, and this. And then sometimes I'm like, you know, sometimes I just want to, I don't know if it's a rant or if it's just a chat about certain, I don't know. I don't know. Today I'm feeling it though. Today I'm just feeling like stream of thought, stream of consciousness. you know, for today. We'll see. We'll see how it goes as we roll through this morning. We've got some discussions on more on the legislative session. A late piece, a late breaking piece.
about the potential for rolling blackouts in the peninsula, especially the lower peninsula, the area served by Homer Electric Association. But we've got to talk about that. Iron Dog stuff. The governor's position on the whole Denali McKinley thing, which I haven't really seen. I mean, I. We haven't taken a poll or anything here. There have been some polls, which have got some interesting results. We'll talk about that.
What else? More discussion there. Soldatna is now pushing for... A new half a million dollar ordinance back in December, which are now starting to break money off for in investigating school bonds for new schools in the KPB. What else? Maybe some good news. Maybe some good news as well. And we'll see where we go from. We'll see where we go from here. It should be an interesting show today. In hour two...
In hour two, we will be hopefully talking, fingers crossed, because I sent him an email and he responded, but I missed the response email mid-afternoon yesterday. I got slammed. I didn't get a chance to respond until early this morning. So hopefully we're going to be talking with David Boyle here in hour two. about what's going on. Because we keep hearing these things with student counts and all these other horror stories.
About the number of the parent teacher or excuse me, not the parent teacher ratio, the student teacher ratio. in the schools and how it's bad and it's uh it's gonna be we're gonna see if we can get some straight dope on this okay david boyle just confirmed that he is he's here for hour two so i sent him the link this morning and he's going to be joining us Because he did send me a history of what the student-teacher ratio is, or pupil-to-teacher ratio is, for the last five years.
And it really hasn't changed that much. Essentially, in all the different grades, it's essentially changed by one student. The class size has increased by about one student for almost all of the grades, with the exception of the sixth through the eighth grade. It went up about three or four students per classroom.
But again, I said this the other day, you know, I think that as the kids get older and they're easier to work with, I mean, I know that's, maybe that's optimistic, but as they get easier to work with it, as they get into the older areas. It should go up because, I mean, again, how shocking is it for some of these kids to go from a student teacher ratio of, you know, of 30 kids in a class to walk into a college course where there's 100 kids in a class?
Anyway, so we're going to talk about that with David, because that's been a new sticking point. That's been a new, or not sticking point, but talking point for a lot of the pro-education spend folks. I've seen it come up here in the last few discussions over the last week or so. They're starting to talk about PTR, the parent, no, excuse me, pupil-teacher ratio. I keep wanting to say parent. But the pupil-teacher ratio.
As you know, this is this is a horrific. It's a horrific thing. We've got to. But is it really as bad as we're hearing? Now, those are averages. So I'm sure there's probably some class out there that's got.
a lot more than what i just described but we'll anyway we'll talk about all that with david uh in our two uh since he is up on that and uh good to keep us in sometimes you got to specialize right i can't keep track of everything that's why we got to bring some of these experts on to uh uh to talk about it or people who are in the know so to speak as well. What else? Proposals, Denali, the thing, legislative session. Okay. So I think that brings us up to where we were.
at the end of yesterday's show, because we didn't quite get through everything during yesterday's show. We kind of ran out of time yesterday. So we'll get into that. We'll get into that here in just a bit. Did you see all the pictures of the people in New Orleans? Did you see the snowball fight on Bourbon Street in New Orleans?
I don't know what's going on down there, but man, the weather, no snow in Anchorage, very little snow across a big chunk of the state. I mean, I've got plenty of snow here. You guys can come and have some if you'd like. But, you know, in Florida and New Orleans, they received a bunch of snow. And it's so funny to watch people who really have never...
seen it in their whole life. And it was put a smile on my face to see the snowball fight down on Bourbon Street, you know, because that's just, that's something crazy. But this weather, this weather these last couple of years has been so crazy. I mean, is it global warming or is it global cooling? Or is it just, is it, is it just change? Is it just change?
It must be it must be just change as well. All right. Well, I guess we'll dive into this discussion about the potential for rolling blackouts. And Barbara in the chat room just mentioned that GVEA in Fairbanks, up in the interior Golden Valley Electric Association, also issued a statement.
about rolling blackouts, so it seems to be kind of a coordinated thing of what's going on. According to Nat Hurst over at the Northern Journal, These two Alaska utilities and state consumer protection attorneys are now warning about the risk of rolling blackouts amid the intensifying shortage.
of natural gas now they they say it's not imminent they say it's not going to happen tomorrow likely it would develop only in a cold snap or any other scenario that tested the grid, right, that really put a power strain on the grid. And they say the risks appear to be rising as the fuel supply diminishes. In 2022, that natural gas supply. generated about two-thirds of the electricity used in the rail belt, which is the area stretching from down here on the Kenai all the way through Anchorage.
Matsu and then north into Fairbanks along the inner tie into the interior. Now, as we know, because we've been talking about it. incessantly on this program. Hillcorp warned that it would not be renewing those binding supply contracts with the utilities. And that is part of the problem. We down here are facing a bigger issue than many areas of the state because our contracts in the area served by HEA, Homer Electric Association, are going to expire.
in like eight weeks the end of march i think mid to end of march those ongoing contracts will expire so there will be no price certain amount of gas Gas will still be available. It just won't be available at that certain guaranteed price. That's why Hillcorp said it would not renew those binding contracts. For the next year... The 25,000 members of HEA, which is based down in the Kenai here, will be depending on what's known as an interruptible, quote-unquote, gas supply.
meaning the seller isn't contractually obligated to provide it in the event of a shortfall. And so now HEA is... facing an issue executive at other rail belt utilities fearful that homer electric may turn to them for backup power are warning they can only do so much and that they say rolling service interruptions could be a reality for Homer's customers in the future. Oh, man. MEA.
which is in Palmer, has a dual fuel power plant that can run on diesel in the event of the gas shortage. They say it could be used to provide backup power, but only up to a point, partially because of particulate and air pollution restrictions. So that, oh man, oh man. They can insure it, but it's going to be tough to keep the lights on for HEA members.
Meanwhile, other expiring gas supply agreements are contributing to an increase in the risk of outages in the interior. GVEA warned last week its 36,000 members. that a worst-case scenario could result in short-lived rolling blackouts as well up there. I mean, this is not good, man.
This is not good. You know, we, you always, always wonder, you know, a rolling blackouts down in California when they were doing it, you know, over the time. And they, you know, that's, that's, that's one thing it's California, you know, it's not. 35 or 40 below like can get up in the interior. I mean, it gets cold down here on the peninsula, but not like that, right? Oh, it's going to be, it's going to be crazy.
So all this stuff is coming to fruition. And I wonder why if I start to wonder about things like. Why did it get critical just now the day the session opened? Right. Because a session. Well, today's Thursday. So the session just opened two days ago. And this was this came out just yesterday.
Now, we've been talking about the potential for this. We've been talking about the problems. We've been talking about the lack of urgency on the part of some of the players in this. And as I look at it and I realize that the timing is a little convenient. That all of a sudden, now we're going to talk about rolling blackouts on day two of the session.
Maybe it's just the cynic in me, right? Maybe it's just the cynic in me that looks at this and goes, wait, it wasn't a problem last week, but now it's a problem? I mean, it was a problem last week. Don't get me wrong. being a little hyperbolic there, but you know, now, now we're going to start talking about rolling blackouts on day two of the session. Hmm. Hmm. Okay. Okay. Again, I'm.
I get this feeling that they're really, really want Uncle Sugar to bail them out. That really getting to that point. Anyway, we'll continue this discussion in just a moment. Don't go anywhere. David Boyle coming up at hour two. The Michael Duke Show. Common Sense. Liberty-based. Free Thinking Radio. Back with more here in just a moment. Ment. Moment. Just a moment. Back with more.
If you missed the show, you can listen to it on your time with Duke's On Demand. Oh, and it's free. Like America used to be. Streaming live every weekday morning on Facebook Live and MichaelDukesShow.com. Okay. Hello, my friends. Hello. here to see what... At least for GVEA, says Rob. It's less about the gas shortage and more about losing power from the Bradley Lake Dam because of construction on the transmission line out of the dam. At least there's that. Yeah.
Bill says, we're being played as usual. Brian says, it's a coinkydink, I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Let's see here. Donna says the KPBSD needs a policy in regards to PTR. pupil-teacher ratio. Packing 30-plus students in the classroom is simply not okay. It's one of the reasons family choose to homeschool PTR and horrible curriculum.
But, but, but, says Greg, they have all those Tesla batteries. They have all those Tesla batteries. Yeah, if MEA has to fire up those diesel generators, it's not cheap. Yeah. um anthony's up in the interior and he says yeah because when 45 below when it's 45 below i want my power to be unreliable that's what i'm saying rolling blackouts in the middle of you know in the middle of winter is that what you really want I mean, you know, it's crazy.
Pupil-teacher ratio for homeschooling is one-to-one, I'm just saying. Yeah, no, I'm with you on that. Okay. Eight and a half inches ahead of normal in Fairbanks. 8.3 inches. You're talking about for snowfall? Yeah. That's possible. Donna says, listen to the January 13th KPBSD school board meeting at 151.
In response to me asking how much money is spent on curriculum and materials, Superintendent Holland's response was, quote, I'm really mad. People who can't even balance their budget at home are trying to tell me how to balance the budget. Wow. Okay. Yeah. She said the condescension and disdain when the public asks a question is real. He's an expert, don't you know? He's an expert. Yeah. He's an expert.
Okay. And yeah, Rick saw my post about the pint of cream. Terry needed a pint of heavy whipping cream. I'm like, okay, I'm going to be downtown. I'll get it. And I went into the store and it was $7. $7 for a pint of whipping cream. I mean, the guy was just madness. $7 for a pint of whipping cream. Which, I mean, that's what you pay for a whole half gallon.
at costco right now i realize that's costco but seven dollars for a pint two cups of whipping cream heavy cream i was just like you guys somebody's got to do better you know somebody's got to do better because that yeah if that was if there's one thing that really surprised me about moving down here it was the lack of And the price of groceries. That's the one thing that caught my attention. That's really...
And everybody I talk to is like, yeah, that's why we make a trip to Costco once every five, six weeks. And we, you know, anytime somebody is going up north, we ask them if they can pick up something for, I mean, it's like, it becomes like a community thing. It's crazy. All right. Let's get back to it. Here we go. The Michael Duke Show. Common Sense. Liberty Base. Free thinking. Radio. Like. Share. Subscribe. Bring the bell. Let's do it. Here we go.
The Michael Duke Show. Seriously humorous with a pinch of intellect. Pinch of intellect. Sorry. That is humorous. Here's Michael Dukes. All right. Good morning. Welcome back. The Michael Duke show, common sense, liberty based, free thinking radio. All right. So we're talking about these rolling blackouts. And this was from a, I mean, there was a news story here that I read, I don't know, it was a week ago or a week and a half ago.
And it was talking about the, you know, when the RCA was asking questions and they had the, I think it was the chief executive for HEA up on the test of. testimonies block. And they said, you know, are you concerned about not finding, you know, not having a gas thing? And the guy's like, well, it's not one of the things I lose sleep about. And here we are now saying, oh, there might be rolling blackouts. Well, maybe we should have been thinking about this or being this is more critical.
Again, the Homer Electric's gas supply is going to, you know, the contract expires in March. When they were looking for fuel to meet the needs for next year, Larry Jorgensen, the chief power production officer, said that they could not find any. Let me say that again. They could not find any gas suppliers.
He said the situation is not good and it's not what any of us desire. But we are tasked with trying to do the very best we can given the situation at hand. If anybody has alternatives that are viable, we're willing to listen because right now nobody's offering us anything. Here's your viable solution. Get on the gas import train right now. 2027, right? That's when it's going to hit the whole place.
HEA, you guys are at the tip of the spear here. You guys are at the pointy end. You're about to run out. You know what you should? You should have been championing importing gas right now. Because you don't have any other options. If anybody's got any alternatives, I mean, we're willing to listen. It's right there. Everybody's... This whole, I mean. Jorgensen said Homer Electric has been working aggressively to reduce its natural gas demand.
by installing more efficient equipment at its power plants, and by developing a solar farm. But it takes time. None of this stuff can be done overnight. Again, we were talking about this in late 2023. It's now 2025. I asked about. the likelihood that Homer Electric's interruptible gas supply could result in inadequate power or rolling blackouts, Jorgensen said the question was incredibly speculative.
I'm incredibly speculative. I don't care if it's speculative or not. It's probably the top question on people's minds. You had one job. provide power to your customers. And now you may not have the fuel to do that. And people are asking, well, what could happen? And you're like, well, that's incredibly speculative. I mean, what? Now, in contrast, the Matanuska electric chief executive explicitly warned.
That the that of that risk that the rolling blackouts is is it is entirely possible that a Homer Electric may not receive enough gas to meet its demand over the next year. So. The chief executive of another utility is saying it's entirely possible that HEA may not have enough gas to serve their customers. I mean. What is going on?
This is, they said that, Izzo, the guy from Matanuska said, MEA said that they addressed those to the Regulatory Commission of Alaska, which has not yet approved Homer Electric's interruptible supply agreement. And the MEA folks told the commission that the railboat utilities should develop a letter of agreement framework that would guide how backup power could be sold from one to another in the event of shortages.
I would think they would have that in place already, but I mean, okay. Now, Fairbanks has a little bit of a different situation. It's not so much the lack of gas. As it is, Rob Byers made a comment in the chat room earlier, it's not so much the lack of gas as it is about losing power from the Bradley Lake Dam because of the construction of the transmission line.
They're doing some work out there, and apparently it's causing some issues. The GVEA owns an array of power plants that use non-gas fuels, coal, diesel, and naphtha. They also rely on cheaper gas-fired power generated on its behalf and purchased from Chugach Electric, which uses the hydroelectric power that we were just talking about and transmitted it all the way to Fairbanks.
But Golden Valley's contract for the gas that's fueled Chugach Electrics generators expires this week. And they said there's no real opportunity to secure more. He said any gas we secure would just take away from the Anchorage Bowl. Making matters worse, again, is that problem with the Bradley Lake Hydra, is that interruption of transmission lines from Bradley Lake.
Between the lost access to that electricity along with the gas-fired power, GVA is less likely to have a fallback. It's the worst-case scenario. I mean, what? Again, we we know what we we have been talking about this since mid to late 2023. And everybody's walking around like, oh, well, you know, now we need to. And everybody is so. Concerned about Alaskan gas.
And again, yesterday, Barbara said something at the end of the show in the chat room that I didn't get a response from. She said, it's not just emotion, because I said, everybody's making this emotional decision. Well, then what is it? If it's not an emotion of being tied to Alaska, oh, we've got to have Alaska gas. We'll put everything off until we can find a way to make it work for us. You should be planning for the worst and hoping for the best.
That's what you should be doing. You know that importing gas is viable. And according to the latest numbers that we saw, because we haven't seen the second report. It is the most economical at this point. And now you've got utilities who are running out of power or the ability to produce power. And now you're like, oh, by the way, we might have rolling blackouts in a place that will kill you if you don't have power. Again, we're not California.
You know, we're not we're not L.A. where you can deal with a four or five hour rolling blackout in your communities every other day or something like that. I mean, I don't know about you, but if you have an older house in Fairbanks and you lose power and your place slowly. gets colder. You know how long it takes to bring that place back up to temperature after you've let it get down into the... I remember one time we had a power outage problem.
And our house, we'd already had a problem with our furnace that year. And our furnace was keeping the house at about 62 degrees. And then the power went out for five hours, four or five hours. The house dropped down to like 43 degrees. You know how long it took once the power was restored? You know how long it took to get that thing back up to 60, 65 degrees? At 40 below?
And now you're going to have rolling blackouts. They're going to just keep coming and going and coming and going. And in all of this could have been this is I'm just I'm getting pissed now. What is going on? We have a solution. It's not the best solution. It's not what I would want. But you're talking about people's lives. You're talking about a utility that's supposedly managed by the state.
They have a monopoly. You have no other choice. They've known this problem was coming because Hillcorp announced in 2022. That they weren't going to be able to supply a certain, you know, a certain steady supply of gas. And here we are. 2022. And now we're three years later and they're like, well, maybe we now they're like, well, maybe we should do something. Yeah, maybe. Oh, my God. Maybe you should do something.
I mean, Fairbanks, I didn't realize that Fairbanks was so close on theirs that their contract with MEA just ran out. Expires this week. The Golden Valley contract for the gas that's fueled Chugach expires this week. So they were buying the gas. Chugach was burning it, passing the power up to Fairbanks. Now theirs expires. And Homer's expires.
in march and the guy was like no i'm not losing any sleep over that really because if i was him that would be my number one priority was making sure that i had enough gas to keep my customers going. Why have we, again, even if it's a short-term solution. You know, they talked about the floating LNG gasification, regasification plant or whatever they're talking about. It doesn't have to be something permanent.
Because it's going to take, even if you wanted to, even if you got the money from God today and you're like, yes, build a gas line, it's still going to take you eight years to get the gas line down here. You realize that, right? Why are you not standing up the rest of the stuff right now? You know what the answer is. And then we see that commentary yesterday from the... Oh, shoot. I just closed it. We see that commentary yesterday from the legislative session from the minority.
And Mia Costello's comment that the caucus was opposed to the likely need to import natural gas, at least for the short term. We'll do everything we can to prevent that. What is your answer? I love these people. Don't get me wrong. I'm a fan of much of what they do.
But what is your solution? Like I said, if you if a boatload of money dropped from space into your lap today and it was 60 or 70 billion dollars and they're like, yes, build this pipeline. Here's a gift. Go. It's still going to be eight years, probably on the early side of eight, at the earliest to get something like that built.
And again, the shortage is supposed to start, well, right now, but they're saying 2027 Hillcorp, even if you gave it a couple extra years, that's six years after the shortage starts. What are you going to do in the mean? Why are we dragging our feet on this? And again, who's going to suffer? All the rate payers, all the people who have to suffer rolling blackouts, all the people who have to deal with. It is a rant today, folks. That's what it is. It's a rant. Why are we waiting?
I would love to have Alaskan gas in homes. I would love to have Alaska gas to Tidewater so that we could export it. I would love to have all that stuff. Why are we waiting now? While we're waiting for all the things to line up perfectly so that we can get it. So we can say, well, we didn't import any gas. I mean, we may be paying two or three times what we were paying for electricity before, but now at least we didn't burn anybody's evil gas from outside.
Is that where we're at? Okay. All right. No, I got to go. I'm about to lose my stuff here in just a second. I look at this and I'm thinking rolling blackouts, everything else, the cost is already so super high. Now we just don't even know. Fairbanks isn't. And now down. All right, we got to go. The Michael Duke Show. Common Sense, Liberty Base, Free Thinking Radio. Back with more right after this.
We're broadcasting live through a series of tubes. Allowing all of these entities to provide streaming stuff going on the Internet. Well, it's kind of hard to explain. Sorry. Streaming live every weekday morning on Facebook Live and MichaelDukesShow.com. Oh, I'm mad now. Now I'm mad. I'm a little agitated. Yeah, I'm a little agitated.
There's no such thing as more efficient equipment when it comes to power generation that relies on petroleum or natural gas. No matter what you do to the entropy of cost alongside the laws of thermodynamics means you're always operating at a negative. Simply put, you're always going to spend more for less until you look at nuclear generation or upgrade the infrastructure.
Is anyone ever going to put the blame on the Susitna River Coalition and a walker for shutting down Susitna Watana? It's a problem. I agree. It's a big part of the problem. But, again. Golden Valley is not a co-op. It's a monopoly. Every time they're doing something to save us money. whatever they ask us. They ask for an increase. Doesn't save us a penny. Well, at least...
Lisa and Gary or Lisa or Gary said, well, GVA just did a price hike and looking at another in the third quarter. Yeah. I mean, I just. Yeah, I don't I don't even know what's what's Yeah Frank says, four hours, 22 minutes and 19 seconds, your house will be back to 68 degrees. It took over four hours for my house to come back up to temperature when it was at 43, when it had come down to 43 degrees or whatever.
I mean, it's it's crazy. Barbara says Fairbanks is trucking LNG from to Fairbanks from the slope. OK, that's great. And I understand that. But they can't do it at the capacity needed to make a huge difference, right? That's part of the problem. Another quote from a fiscal conservative. Why do I keep voting these people in? Yeah. Okay. From our $8 pint of Moo Juice to Rolling Black House, they want us gone. Bill says, they want to drive us out. The writing is on the wall. Yeah.
Good morning. Good morning, my love. Let's see here. The Susitna Watana is fraught with its own technical problems. I mean, I don't know why we aren't exploring more hydro. And, uh, and as, uh, as Anthony has mentioned, this Nick salt, the. The nuclear salt batteries. I don't know why we're not talking more about that. Because those are, I mean, that's really the way of the future. That is the way of the future. If we do not develop the known resources.
We will sacrifice electricity for heat by winter of 2028. Total gas demand, runway of cooking, I guess. I'll have to take a look at that and study that a little bit more. Thank you for sending it. Yeah. Yeah, the nuclear problem. I mean, yeah, that's the thing. We interviewed... I forgot his name. I just dug it up the other day because I wanted to bring him back on the program. We interviewed one of the gentlemen who was one of the inventors of that Nixalt battery nuclear.
battery that they're going to be putting in at Eielson, I guess, to try things out. And it was a super interesting discussion. And now we're talking about geothermal. As well. Yep. Thank you, Rob. They're actually opened up the side of the readout. Was it readout? It was a readout that I was talking about the other day for potential geothermal. But yeah. Yeah, this whole thing is just, I don't even know what to say.
When you see the problem coming and you know it's coming and you don't have a sense of urgency and then all of a sudden it's like, oh, by the way, rolling blackouts are coming. What the what the what? Harold says, because the market, I don't know what Harold is talking about, whether he's talking about nuclear or something else, but because the market doesn't want them, pretty simple.
Well, it's because the market's been terrified by all the horror stories of everything else, but nuclear is the way to go. If you want long-term, in the future, sustainable, always there, that's, I mean... That's the direction we need to go. We could just get over our prejudices. The Michael Duke Show. Not your daddy. Wait, sorry, not your daddy? Ooh, not your daddy's talk radio. Whew, I was scared for a second. Thought we were going down. Here's Michael Dukes and the show.
Okay. Welcome back to the program. We're continuing on. Oh, man, I'm just I'm trying not to get upset about this. Trying not to do it. Let's get into. Let's talk about that energy, by the way. There was a very short little blurb on the legislative priorities when they were talking about all the different legislative priorities.
going on in the first day of the session here as they get started, this article in the ADN that we were talking about yesterday. They mentioned the executive orders from President Trump. which was intended to open up resource development and expand resource development in Alaska. They mentioned that Kathy Giesel said,
That we're not a colony to be pillaged, which I thought was it. I thought that was really a weird comment because nowhere in there did I see the president be like, we're just going to take over your land. And and I mean, it was. I didn't see that in things. So it was kind of a weird comment from her, and I don't know if she was just kind of feeding red meat to her new base on the left or what, but that just seemed like kind of a weird comment.
But then it goes on to say, and literally there's only, it's like two short paragraphs. Legislators are set to grapple with the looming shortfall of Cook Inlet gas, which is the bulk fuel used to heat and power South Central. Well, not just South Central. As the other article points out, it's the rail belt from down here at the end of the spit on Homer. all the way up to Fairbanks. That whole thing is powered in part by Cook Inlet Natural Gas.
Now, Barbara did point out that in Fairbanks, they are still trucking gas down from the North Slope. But the problem there is, is that they don't have the supply. They don't have the ability. And to be able to get the quantity. They couldn't run the whole city. They couldn't run the whole interior on gas because they don't have enough trucks. And it would be, I mean, it would be a thing, right? But.
The whole state is running the whole the rail belt is like where the majority of the population lives. The road system right from the spit from the from the end of the highway down here down the hill. all the way up to Fairbanks, it's all dependent on one inner tie and rail belt and energy grid exchange. And so this is really important.
And yet we get this quote that said the caucus is opposed to the likely need to import natural gas. It's a likely need. First of all, they acknowledge it's a likely need. And then they said they're opposed to it at least for the short term. Well, how much longer can we wait? How much longer can we even if Trump decided it's an issue of national security that we have Alaska gas?
to market or whatever. Let's just hypothetically say that again, eight, unless they want to throw all the FERC and regulatory stuff and everything else goes out the window and they're just like drill, baby bill, build it. But even then, I'm not a construction guy, but it's still going to take probably three or four years to construct a pipeline all the way from the North Slope down to Tidewater. It's still going to take time.
Even if you cut it in half, that's four years. And we're starting to run out of gas now. GVA, out of gas now. Homer Electric, out of gas. Next month, in March. And so we have to wait four years? Four years of... You know, much higher prices and rolling blackouts and everything else. I mean, I know real talk about what's going on. And again, why are we looking to the legislature to fix this? We already know what the answers are. We already know that in the short term, we should be importing gas.
And again, if you want to build a gas pipeline, if you want to do, I'm all for that. As long as the economics work out and everything's good and we the people are not paying for it directly by some kind of state subsidy. then I'm all for it. But in the meanwhile, we have to do something. And the easiest... Again, the low-hanging fruit is right there. Right there. Import the gas for the short term. just go ahead it's right you know we can do it and yes the cost will go up but just slightly
It's not like a doubling or tripling that I know some people are worried about a doubling or tripling. No, I mean, I think the increase on the price was 10% to 15%. Why? I want somebody to tell me. And I really haven't been able to get a good answer either on the air or off the air because I've asked off the air as well. Why are we so hesitant? to import gas i mean some of the responses have been well they could cut us off at any time we would be held hostage i mean that that's not how it works
I mean, maybe if you're making a deal with Russia and Russia's at war and you piss them off, I guess that could. But in most other places, I mean, it's a deal. Right? They're not just going to cut you. And what are we talking about? I think they said three tanker ships a year's worth was the amount that I heard being thrown around. So, again, what is the real reason? Why are we waiting? Why are we waiting to the last minute to get to this point?
It makes no sense whatsoever to me. And maybe somebody else out there can explain it to me. But I'm looking at this, and the one thing that makes a society free and productive and allows us to do other things is access to cheap, affordable energy, or at least... maybe not cheap and affordable, maybe that, but at least affordable, reliable energy, affordable and reliable energy.
And if now we're going to be facing rolling blackouts and all these other problems, I mean, are we, why did it take this long to get to this point? I mean, again, I want to make the point Hill Corp. announced it in 2022 that they were done, that there was no, we could no longer They would no longer be able to guarantee supply at a fixed rate. They would not be renewing their binding contracts in 2022.
And then in 2023, there was a lot of discussion. They did the plan. They had that first report that came out and said that. Essentially, that importing natural gas was going to be the most affordable and reliable way to make it happen. And ever since then, everybody's been dragging their feet. Well, we can't do that. We don't want to do that. The legislature, no, no, no, we don't want to do that. Okay, I got to get off this topic.
Interesting poll. There was a poll over at KTUU that was asking about the McKinley versus Denali thing. 71%. Still call it Denali. The question was not whether or not you wanted it to change, but what do you call Alaska's tallest peak? 71% said they call it Denali. 29% said they call it Mount McKinley. Do you care? Really, do you care one way or the other? I mean, I'm asking that. Even the governor, when asked about all the executive orders and asked specifically about...
the renaming of Denali, he said that he would have to speak to, he said, how did he put it? He said, I'm sorry, I'm looking for the actual quote here. He said he wanted to have a conversation with Trump about what the mountain means to Alaskans and to Americans and what the mountain means in terms of its name, Denali, to our native folks. That's what he said.
Most of the congressional delegation has basically come out and said, keep it Denali. I don't know. What do you think? Does it matter? Does it really? I mean, I don't particularly Denali is fine with me.
mckinley was fine with me it's still denali national park regardless of what's going on but i mean i don't know i just thought this was interesting that this is this is the question that's on everybody's mind should we rename the mountain how about we get some gas in here so that we don't have rolling blackouts call them out and whatever you want big smoke you know i don't know out of time back with hour two dead ahead
Yeah, LNG. This is Anthony. Now, Anthony's, for those of you who don't know, Anthony works in the heating business. So he's got some familiarity with this. He says, LNG gas. per running btu hour at its current cost in fairbanks is a negligible difference compared to i think heating oil is what he's talking about and when you factor in unreliable supply versus demand chaotic pricing and the cost or retrofitting of a heating system
It's a potential bad gamble if you're in the interior and not sitting next to a pipe. LNG just isn't in a spot to prop up or offset heating demands in the interior, period. That's true. uh because i looked at retrofitting i looked at the cost of retrofitting a furnace to burn natural gas versus oil and i was like what if i had dual what if i had it both ways what if i had two different it's not cheap
I think the cheapest price I found was something like six or seven thousand dollars to retrofit the boiler. I mean, it's crazy. Micronuclear is 15 years away, says Kevin. Maybe. But it'll be always 15 years away if we don't get started on it at some point. I agree, Harold, that hydrogen is something that needs to be explored in a big way.
Now that they're finding more ways to develop and actually mine hydrogen out of the ground. Because the problem with hydrogen, of course, was always the creation of hydrogen. because hydrogen, basically it took electricity to make hydrogen, to split it out. That's the easiest way to do it, but it's also the most expensive energy-wise.
Now that they're finding more ways to be able to basically pump hydrogen out of the ground by... What do they do? They inject something into different geological... formations and it basically gases off hydrogen. I can't remember what the, we were just talking about it here a few weeks ago. Maybe Brian remembers because he's a, he's got a geology background, but I, maybe that's it right there.
Brian says, I think you can thank Jeff Bezos for part of that. He funds a big part of the NRDC, which is vehemently opposed to nuclear energy. Yeah. And all these people that want to shut down. This is sitting in a river coalition wants to shut down. West is sitting in coal power as well. I mean, why doesn't everybody just move out of the state? There you go. Shut it all down.
Hypothetically, if LNG demand goes up significantly, somehow the price of it will go up as the lack of sustainable infrastructure will require more and more money to accommodate shipping. And all the while, since demand of diesel and heating will remain demands reduced, the cost of it will go way down. It will be a perpetual grass is greener cycle. Yeah, I got that. I'm going here. Safe travels. Okay.
Nuclear captures a large specific portion of the grid and doesn't leave room for any competition because they can't match the prices. Is that a bad thing at this point? You know? How long did it take to build the Alaska pipeline? Let me Google that for you. Let me see. I think it was. Three years and two months is what it says. Three years and two months. $8 billion in 1977.
So, like I said, four years, that's, I mean, I think four years is a generous timeframe for that area. If again, assuming that they don't, that all the permits are in place and everything else. But you can put up a casino in 48 hours, says Bill. Yes, yes, that's true. That's true. We talked about that yesterday. Okay. Okay. Instead of no, can't we just say yes? Cackle, cackle, cackle, cackle.
I sound like a gun control advocate because we must do something? Okay. I mean, should we just sit around and wait for the lights to go out, I guess, at this point? is that what we should just sit around and wait we just wait for the lights to go out no big deal don't worry about it okay um
Well, we're 30 seconds out. I see David's in the room. David, let me bring you on real quick. David, can you hear me? Yes, Michael, I can hear you. Can you hear me? I can hear you. You sound great. All right, I'm going to put you back in the green room, so don't go anywhere. We'll be right back to you. All right, we got to go. The Michael Duke Show, Common Sense, Liberty-based, free-thinking radio. David Boyle up next. Let's go. Here we go.
thing back in its holster we haven't gone anywhere i don't understand check out the michael dukes show.com for information on how to get access to the podcast welcome to the party pal The greed and the entitlement is astounding to me. What more could you want from a low budget radio program? This is a dumpster fire. That was just BS. It is time to get a new perspective. We know just what you need and we've got just the cure. Open wide and prepare for a steaming hot cup of freedom. I just don't.
The Michael Dukes Show, streaming live across the world. Live around the world on the internet at michaeldukeshow.com and across the state of Alaska, this is your favorite radio station and or FM translator. Good morning and welcome back to the program, my friends. Hour two of the big radio show. I apologize. I got a little wound up in the last hour. I'm just a little agitated to watch people who are our leaders basically spin in place and not decide where they're going because...
You know, on this energy thing, even though we've known it's coming, we know it's a problem. And yet they refuse to look at the number one of the short term fix. It doesn't have to be a long term fix. It could be a short term fix for our problem. But I'm not going to get back onto that. We were talking about gas in the Cook Inlet and the rolling blackouts that they're now saying are possible for Homer, the Lower Peninsula, and up in the interior in Fairbanks.
I'm going to stop talking about that now. I promise. Because I'm agitated. We're about to talk with David Boyle. who is an education advocate. He writes for Must Read. He's a frequent guest on the program to talk about education issues. And we're going to dive down deep into this with him because we're already seeing the handwriting on the wall of this.
discussion about a $1,900 BSA increase and what is the better way to do it. We're going to talk about that. Coming up on tomorrow's program, which is Firearms Friday, for those of you who are keeping track at home, our guest will be David Kodria. From the War on Guns blog, and he writes for Guns Magazine's Firearms News. He's the guy that helped break the Fast and Furious story, the gunwalker scandal.
of the Obama administration. He's been around a day or two. And so we'll talk with him tomorrow on Firearms Friday, along with Willie Waffle and more. But let's dive into this discussion right now. about education, because we know that education is going to be one of the, if not the biggest talk, discussion that's going to happen in the legislative session this year.
Because it's what everybody's been talking about, you know, and they want to increase the BSA. That's what they're stuck on increasing. They don't want a one time. They don't want a one-time increase. They want to bake an increase into all future years. of what's going on. And now we're starting to see some of the talking points come out, including things like PTR, pupil teacher ratio and more on this. Every school district across the state appears to have a deficit.
$17 million in the Fairbanks, or $16 million in the Fairbanks area, $17 million down in the KPB. The Matsu's got a $22 million deficit. And the Anchorage School District has got like a... It's an 89 or 90 million dollar deficit for the coming year. And so it's all about getting them more money. You know, that is that's where it's at right now.
So to talk with us about this and to talk us through some of this is David Boyle, again, a friend of the show and education advocate. And he joins us right now to talk about it. Good morning, sir. How are you doing? Good morning, Michael. I'm doing great. Let's hurry up while the power's still on. Yeah, really. I mean, power could go off at any moment. So we're going to do our thing here. It's madness. Why do you stir me up, David? Don't do that. That'll be the thing.
All right, David. So you can see in these early days of the session, we're already starting to talk about some of the... Some of the talking points, we're already seeing some of the battle lines being drawn over this issue on education. We saw yesterday in that discussion the quote from... The quote from Bill Wilikowski when he was when they were talking about the education funding and they said, oh, no, we couldn't have we don't we don't need any.
policy changes. We don't need any accountability measures. What we have is the lack of funding, and we need to address that first and foremost alone and apart from any kind of accountability measures. We've seen Maxine, no, sorry, Loki Tobin talk about increasing the BSA by, well, over 500, almost $600 million a year in perpetuity.
And I mean, a minimum starting point is what they talked about in this article is 200 million a year moving forward. And of course, we're already facing deficits and everything else. And of course, one of the new bludgeoning.
tools that they're using is the student teacher ratio the number of students in a classroom versus the teachers and they're saying it's out of control it's out of control they're stuffing kids into every classroom yet we're closing schools because some schools are at 50% capacity. And so, I mean, I have a lot of questions about this. So let's get started on it, David. Dealer's choice. Do you want to start off with the PTR or where do you want to start off? You guide me here.
Yeah, we'll start off with the pupil teacher ratio. But first of all, I did listen to the Senate majority. I guess it was yesterday. Senator Wilikowski saying we basically don't want funding to follow policy, which. That's almost laughable. By the way, the Senate Minority Caucus, led by Senator Schauer, said just the opposite. We have to fix policy before we just throw money at the problem.
two diametrically opposed uh positions on this um i've looked at the uh student let's call it student teacher ratio um i've looked in the the anchorage school district which i have data on i was unable to find any data both on the fairbanks and the kenai school districts the data i found in the anchorage school district is in a an audited
uh report called the annual comprehensive financial report acfr um folks you can go you can should be able to get that from your local school district to see how what they're spending their money on and how much actually unallocated reserves they have. In the Anchorage School District, they actually provided in an appendix at the end, the student teacher ratio, and they provided for a 10 year period.
So I don't want to confuse the audience with too many numbers, but we have to talk about some of them. So I'll look at the third grade, which is rather important to see what the student-teacher ratio is. In 2016, that school year 2016, the ratio was 25 to one. And this school year, it's 26 to one, an increase of one. So.
You know, we have Senator Bert Stedman speaking at the Senate Majority Caucus the other day as well. And he said the student population or classroom, student to teacher ratio classroom. is exploding, even though we have fewer students. So it just doesn't make sense unless you fire a lot of teachers, I guess. I question the validity of his statement regarding the explosion of student-teacher ratio. The other grade I looked at, just as an example, I looked at grade 10. And if you look at grade 10,
In 2016 school year, the ratio was 30.5 students to one teacher. If you look at that in 2024, it was 31.25. an increase of not even one student per teacher. Now granted, these are all averages. in some classrooms they may have 35 students they may even have upwards of 40 students like in a math class like what happened when i was in school and in some of the other schools or classes you may only have 12 students
But, you know, we're comparing apples to apples here. We're looking at the student teacher ratio over a 10 year period on the graph that you show right there. This is out of the audited ACFR report for the Anchorage School District. And as you can see, on the average, it's minimal increase. I mean, well, kindergarten goes... in 2019 goes from 22 and you don't i you don't let's see 22 to 23 students in the current school year one student
So you got to say, well, what's going on here? We have fewer students in the school district. Do we have fewer teachers? And the answer to that is yes, we do have fewer teachers. So maybe the classroom sizes have increased. The other thing is you can't look at the total number of teachers in a school district. You have to look at the number of teachers in the classroom. That's a very difficult data point to find.
You have a lot of teachers doing administrative work. And for example, in the Anchorage School District a few years ago, when they started their IT division, it was being led by teachers. The whole thing was just teachers and a few, let's say, IT grunts doing the work. They've changed that now. I don't know where they put those teachers, probably in administrative overhead.
This is fake news. Let's just call it what it is. It's fake news. But this is what you're going to hear in the Senate and probably in the House somewhat. But, you know, I would. I would recommend the people listening that are in Fairbanks and the Kenai do an open records request to your local school district and ask them for the data that you see here. Grades kindergarten through 12 and ask them.
For example, over a five-year period, that ought to be adequate. They'll probably try to charge you some money, but they should have that data readily available and at hand. And when you look at this and for folks who are on the radio and can't see the chart, I mean, the biggest increase, excuse me, the biggest increase. is in the high school grades, excuse me, in the middle school grades, where it jumps from 27 to 1, 27 students to one teacher in the 2019-2020 school year, to 31 and a quarter.
students to one teacher for five years later so i mean that's an increase of four students i mean it is significant i guess in that regards but isn't that the time that it's supposed to be starting to jump up I mean, like I've said earlier in the program, I mean, when you go to a college course, I've attended college classes where there's 70, 80 people in a room.
And so shouldn't you slowly, as the children age and as they become more mature and as they're easier to manage, shouldn't you be increasing the classroom sizes? Shouldn't that be kind of an automatic thing to begin with? I mean, 30 students in a high school. school class.
That should be a no-brainer. You know, that should not be a big deal. 30 or 40 students, 50 students, that should not be that hard because by that point, they should be getting close to adult enough to be able to at least be manageable. This is going to be one of the big talking points, right, David? This is where they're going to hit on this hard and basically say, well.
I mean, we already heard stories of 37 students in a grade school class, and that may be the exception, but not the rule or the average, right? Right. Yes, that's probably an outlier data point. and and you're exactly right when you get to like what used to be junior high when i was a kid in seventh grade uh your class sizes get larger definitely in a class like math and english language arts I don't believe I ever had a class from junior high through high school.
it was smaller than 30 students the average was probably closer to 35 students and i think i did fairly well and i think most of my fellow students did well as well the same rather And that graph you just showed, or chart you just showed, you're right. When you get to about seventh grade, it jumps from 27 to 31 students. 31 students. If they behave themselves and that, Michael, that's one of the keys. We have some serious problems and I think a lot of teachers are leaving.
classroom because of this we have a lot of problems with students that are not behaving inappropriately and are rather disruptive and unfortunately uh it appears as if And I don't know what the reason is that the school districts just don't want to handle these children that are actually interfering with the civil rights of the other students to learn.
And that's a huge problem today. Well, we definitely need that discipline issue to be handled as well. I mean, that's a separate kind of separate. And more money, I don't think, is going to necessarily fix that on the way out the door. Harold is asking in the chat room, why are we working?
worrying about this you know this this we're worrying about this we're talking about this because this is the new talking point i've started seeing this early last week where several politicians have mentioned the student to teacher ratio as another reason why they need more money because they couldn't possibly teach if there were 30 students in the class. It's just too disruptive, et cetera, et cetera. That's why we're talking about this right now, because they're also overblowing.
the the the disparity in the teacher student ratio as well so that's one of the reasons why we're talking about this we're talking with david boyle senior contributor for must read alaska uh education advocate and a friend of the show we're going to take a quick break and when we come back we'll have more with david and we will continue this discussion don't go anywhere the michael duke show common sense liberty-based free thinking radio we'll be back with more in just a moment you
Listened to by more staffers in Juneau than any other show. Because their bosses told them to. And after what they just heard, oh man, they're gonna be best. You're a bad, bad man. The Michael Duke Show. Okay, David Boyle is our guest. We're in the break right now. I'm sorry. I'm going back here. And again, Harold, that's why we're talking about this. Right. I mean, to me, this should be a non-issue.
This should not be a big issue, especially looking at that. And I'll pull that chart up again just so that you guys can see it and take a look at it. I mean, it should not be that big an issue. When you look at the chart and you go, well, that's not that big an increase. I mean, sure, it's a jump in junior high or middle school, whatever you're calling it today. There is a jump in there, but it's still 31 students. It's not.
It's not that big a deal. The problem is they're going to use it and make it a talking point. They're going to make it a big deal, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to. One of the reasons why I wanted to bring David on to talk specifically about this. And Harold, you yourself have talked about how putting money in the BSA is not the way to fix this, which I agree with.
And so we need to talk about that as well. But again, that is the big push right now. The big push is we need to put that money. in the bsa and again that locks it in for uh you know in in perpetuity and that's part of the big problem there um david what are some of the other um uh you you said you couldn't find the numbers for Fairbanks and the Mat-Su, because we heard some anecdotal stuff yesterday that there were some classes in the Mat-Su that had...
37 36 37 students in it again if it's a high school class or even a junior high school class i don't have a problem with that because That's what should be happening. They should be getting more mature, easier to handle, et cetera, et cetera. And if it's not the case, then we do need to talk about policy. Because the policy then becomes how do we handle the discipline in those areas if the kids are not being disciplined, right? Yes. The Matsu...
let's call it an outlier and probably one of the finest examples of the five largest school districts we have in Alaska. I wouldn't say 37, 39 students in a math class in the Mat-Su School District is a problem. I think their students are probably, I'm not sure, I'll just make this anecdotal comment that they're probably better behaved than the students in the Anchorage School District. By the way, I...
I have a good friend that is a teacher in the elementary system in Anchorage. And he said, after the first year of teaching, the students are feral. In other words, they're wildlife, uncontrollable. These are first graders and second and third graders. And you can imagine what it's going to be like later on in middle school when they really start bullying each other.
I don't think the teachers are given the liberty and freedom to be able to manage their classrooms. So in the old days, when you and I were students, you got sent to the... vice assistant principal's office and uh you weren't seen for probably the remainder of the day you sat there gave you a book or whatever and that's what you did today this there is very little discipline
You know, now we have this thing called restorative justice coming into the school systems, particularly in the Anchorage School District that former board president Margo Bellamy is pushing right now, restorative justice. in other words we can't punish the kids that are in low income and minority groups as much as we punish those that are in other groups um because we we're going to get payback let's say so on the
Student-teacher ratio, the Anchorage Teachers Union, the AEA, they have a new contract going in position. Their contract expires at the end of the school year. And they're going to solve the student-teacher ratio because they put it in their contract. This is very interesting because, as you know, we're losing students. Therefore, they're probably going to lose union members. Well, they should lose union members when the student count goes down is 10%.
All right. Hold on. I want to continue this part of the conversation to talk about this. Now that it's being put into the contract, that raises a whole other set of questions for me. So we're going to continue. David Boyle is our guest. The Michael Duke Show. Please like and share. Please subscribe. Ring the bell.
But sharing is important. Sharing is caring. If you share it, more people get involved. And that's what we need to do right now. So sharing is caring. So please, wherever you're watching, go ahead and share it. Here we go. The Michael Duke Show. By the way, Michael, there's my high school picture. Public Anima number one. Backwards, right there. Enemy, public enemy number one, which makes more sense. On the other hand, he's a little bit of a pain in the Michael Duke show.
All right. Yeah, I'm a pain in the something or other. Back here, the Michael Duke Show continues. David Boyle is our guest. I can see your high school picture there, David. Thank you for sharing that with us. All right. We are continuing on with David Boyle, senior contributor for Must Read Alaska, education advocate, friend of the show.
He just brought up something near the end of the break there that I wanted to get back into because I found that very interesting. You're saying now for the first time that they are. The parent teacher, excuse me, pupil teacher ratio, student teacher ratios are now being mentioned and included in the employment contracts for the teachers as well.
What, so they won't have to have a specific number of, you know, something more than a specific number of students? Or how does that work? Yes, the Anchorage Teachers Union, the AEA. they're going in position as a paragraph in the new contract by the way they want a 15 increase across the board for one year in salaries they're going in position in the contract has a paragraph where it says
Members shall be compensated by addenda for workloads that exceed the following levels. Elementary educators will receive $250 per student per month. for students in excess of the following levels so if you have let's say just say your classroom uh pre-k the limit is 18 students Kindergarten, their limit is 20 students. Grades 1 to 3, the limit is 22 students. And grades 4 through 5, they limit the classroom size to 25 students.
So let's just say you're a kindergarten teacher and the contract that's approved says you can only have 20 students in the class. or that kindergarten teacher gets paid $250 a month for each student greater than the number of 20. So let's just say you got 22 students. you're going to get $500 a month extra during the school year. Right. This is how they're going to control the student-teacher ratio. And therefore...
keep the number of their members or even increase the number of their union members. What's the number in the contract for middle school, junior high? What's the baseline that they said on that before they start getting paid the extra money in the contract? What's the baseline for middle school you just read? Oh, middle school. Well, grades four through five is 25 students. Hold on a minute, because I'm just going to say that's already over.
That's all, you know, some of these are the averages are already over what they're putting as a minimum in the contract. So, yes, you broke the code. Yeah. So, I mean, I mean, if it's 20 in kindergarten and the average is already 23, that's the current average 23, 24 school year is 23 to one.
That means they're already going to be making an extra $8,000, $10,000 a year. If it's even lower than that down in the middle schools, that's where they're going to make the real money. You're going to want to be a middle school teacher because you're going to be making an extra $1,500 a month. I mean, and this is the first time this kind of stuff has been included? Yes, this is brand new paragraph added to the going in position for the teachers.
Well, I'll call it the teacher's union, even though it includes nurses, librarians, psychologists, et cetera. They're going in position only stops at grades four through five, but. There are a whole bunch of other extras in there for all the special ed people.
general education, physical education, fine arts, life skills. I mean, it goes on and on. I will send you the entire contract after the... after we're done here yeah no i mean that that's going to be interesting and the fact that they're going in when you say going in position this is the starting position from the union's perspective
The fact is that they're coming in and they want a 15% salary increase in one year. I mean, this is what, a three-year contract? Is that what they go through here is three-year contracts? No, Michael, it's a one-year contract. Oh, it's only a one-year contract. Okay. Yes. So one-year contract. 15% increase. They're already facing a budget deficit in Anchorage is what, $89 million? Is that what it is this year? $107 million. It went up. $107 million.
So they're already facing a shortfall of $107 million, and they want a 15% increase in their salaries, which... accounts for probably 80, 85% of the overall budget is personnel costs. And so we're going to see a huge, I mean, this is. This is crazy, David. I mean, this stuff is just absolutely crazy. Now, the idea that somehow what they need is an increase to the BSA.
A lot of conservatives are saying, look, we're willing to talk about an increase, but not as much as many of those who are championing it want. What is there? Is there an increase? Do you think that there should be an increase to the BSA? And if so, then what do you think is a reasonable amount versus the amounts that we're seeing come out from people like Loki Tovin, etc.?
I like the funding increased outside of the VSA because I don't like to see it put in concrete or perpetuity. Once you put it in the foundation formula, you're not going to get it out of that formula. because you're going to, you know, you're just, it's not going to happen. Now, last year, they put $680 per student increase outside the BSA. And, you know, two years ago, the Anchorage School District said, We only need an increase in the BSA of $100. And now they say they went well.
Loki Tobin gives them the idea that we need an increase of over $1,900 in the BSA, which is well over half a billion dollars in the general fund for the state. So, you know, there go your PFD folks, pretty much all of it, or most a lot of it, let's say. But let me give you an idea, you know, and the problem with, you know, the problem with the teachers union is.
I don't have anything against unions, especially non-governmental unions. I think we need them. But when you come to government unions like the teachers union, there's no distinguishing between a very good classroom effective teacher. versus a mediocre teacher. Let's say I'm the mediocre teacher and in third grade, and I've been there longer than you have, and you're the fourth grade teacher.
you've only been there five years and I've been there 20 years. So I'm getting paid a lot more than you are, even though you're head and shoulders above me in performance. And I don't really care because, you know, I care about the kids, but. I'm not concerned whether we have some that can't learn or not. And I'm really good at teaching math or English language arts. So I pass my kids on to you down the hallway into fourth grade. You have to make up.
for my shortcomings in being an effective teacher. And that's the problem with a union contract where they're all the same. The only difference is how long they've been employed. And what extra educational opportunities they've accumulated, like a master's degree or a doctorate degree. Right. Well, and that's been the danger that we've talked about in doing this.
Through the BSA, I've said it and many other people have said it, that putting money into the BSA is not the answer for a couple of reasons. One, it's in perpetuity and it will probably never be revisited for the first reason. There's no accountability when the money goes into the BSA, and we know that a lot of that money is being utilized and sucked up for overhead.
facilities costs and other things. There's no mandate that that money actually make it into the classroom, although that's how it's sold to us. It's sold to us as, oh, don't you love the children? Don't you want the kids to have books and pencils and coloring pens and everything? But we know that in many districts, you know, only 40, 45, not even half the money is actually making it down into the classroom.
And so to me, that is not the way to fix any kind of educational problem. If you were king for a day, David, and you've been studying this for a long time. What what would be the solution to the education woes that we're facing today? I mean, between the. performance woes because we're what 48th 49th i think we went up to like 46th on one of the math or reading or whatever but i mean we're down in the bottom we spend more than almost any other state in the country
What would be the solution here? Is it just money? Is it a combination of accountability and money? Does it need to go into a BSA or one-time funding? Does it need to be a special funding mechanism? What are your thoughts on it? Well, what we're doing today is we're rewarding bad behavior, and we're incentivizing that behavior by throwing more money at it. For example, Title I schools get more money than a regular neighborhood school.
neighborhood schools get a lot more money than a charter school. Charter schools get a lot more money than a correspondence or homeschool student. So, you know, the charter schools are doing great. Let's reward them and let's grow them. Let's look at this like a business and you have a lot of franchises throughout the country. You're going to take the franchises that are, let's say, losing money, you're going to close them. The franchises that are doing great.
you're going to replicate them and you're going to grow the ones that you have as well. And that's what we need to do with charter schools. There was a bill a few years ago, I think it was Governor Dunleavy's bill. to increase the number of charter schools by allowing the state board of education to authorize or begin charter schools to get them out from the monopolistic control of the school districts
like the Anchorage School District. That's one of the things. They should also allow maybe boroughs and munis to be able to charter or authorize new charter schools as well. You know, there's their waiting list in Anchorage, like the Polaris, which is not a charter school, it's an alternative school. There's a waiting list of over 900 students for that school. Aquarian Charter School has well over 200 students on their wait list.
You know, it's like if you're a business, you're going to stay open longer or you're going to increase the size. You're going to add more salespeople, et cetera, to take care of the customers that are waiting outside the door. And until. until everybody including the legislature sees the parents and the students as the customers, nothing will ever change. And again, I think it goes back to not only that, it's the accountability.
Right. We need the accountability of educators. And you're right. If if charter schools are doing and there's been some speculation that that was a fluke, that it really didn't. You know, charter schools aren't really that much further ahead, et cetera, et cetera. But if you settle that issue, why wouldn't we model?
Why wouldn't we take the ideas of things that are working, like some of the things in charter schools, and move them over to more brick and mortar mainstream schools? Why wouldn't we do that? Or at least, as you said, remove the stumbling blocks for new charter schools to be created. If there's a demand, if there's a 200 wait list at one charter school and 100 at another and 200 or 150 at a third.
You've got enough students there to create a whole, at least a whole new big school. Why wouldn't you do that? If that's where the demand is, why don't we move more towards that? Versus if brick and mortar is no longer popular. And we're seeing that. We saw the decrease in enrollment in brick-and-mortar Tier 1 schools. Why wouldn't we be embracing this other thing and be flexible? Is it because of the...
power and control? Is it because the unions don't have the grip on that? Is that where this is all coming out? So there's a lot of things going on here. Charter schools are so, let's say, relatively new over the last 20, 30 years, 20 years, I believe. And people don't want to change. They like the current. establishment of the neighborhood schools. Now I listened to a lot of the parents complaining about the closing in the Anchorage of the closing of the seven schools they put on the list.
It just amazed me. Hardly any of the parents knew how poorly the students in that school were performing on the Alaska Star Test. And so it's a lack of information. But they were saying, oh, it's the center of the neighborhood. I went to school there. My two kids go to school there. We just love the school. It was an emotional event.
It had nothing to do with rational thought. And I understand that. But, you know, my three kids were in five school districts. And they didn't have a chance to get attached to any schools. And it gave them more flexibility in their lives as well. So they had to adapt and learn. But I don't know how you break it up here. The teachers union and some of the other unions in the school districts, like the Teamsters Union, they have a grip, an iron grip on this K-12 education through the legislators.
that they support. I mean, we even pay to fly students down there. We pay to fly teachers down there with tax dollars or, you know, state funding dollars. then they stay there and they lobby the legislators it's just it's a complete circle it is it is it's a never-ending cycle we're going to continue here david boyle is our guest The Michael Duke Show continues.
Brian says the government hates competition. It's not just the union. It's the culture of government. And I can see that it's an impetus. It's a you know, it's a it's a habit. We can't even conceive. Many people can't even conceive that there might be another way other than what the government has laid out for us. And that's why we need to be fighting for things like charter schools and correspondence programs and things like that even more.
We'll be back with more. David Boyle is our guest. The Michael Duke Show, Common Sense Radio. Running on 100% pure beard power. Oh, also some coffee. We dip our beard in coffee. Ha, nice beard. The Michael Duke Show. Okay, we are continuing ahead in the break right now. David Boyle is our guest. I just lost something here. Hold on a second here. Close that. Okay, just lost one of my timers. You know, David, oh, here it is. That's why I couldn't see it.
um melissa burnett who is the president of the school board in fairbanks has been in the chat room talking somebody asked her frank asked her when was the last time the north the fairbanks north star school board school district had no budget deficits. And she said, not since I've been here. Seven years. Seven. years they've been running a budget deficit at some point you got to say somebody's not doing their job if this is a continuing crisis for seven plus years um
I mean, we've got issues. If you look at this and, you know, by year three, you should be like, we've got, you know, if you're in a third year of a deficit, you've got like, no, this is not working. We've got to do something different. But they don't want to cut. They don't want to go deeper. And at this point, I think that's what needs to happen. There needs to be more cuts. Now, she also said earlier that she said. Let's see. She said.
We have a $6 million deficit after the school closures, which will result in a raise in the pupil-teacher ratio after administrative cuts at the top. We've already cut programs, sports, aides, and ELP. We have nothing left.
there's got to be something left because you can't keep running a deficit and I mean you have something has to happen if you hit year five and you've been running a deficit for five years somebody something needs to happen there's got to be a change because otherwise it's a never it's just never ending the the the call for more money is never ending and the fact that
You may be pouring exponentially increasing amounts of money into it and still having poor results just shows an absolute failure. Yeah, Fairbanks. Actually, Fairbanks is being forced, their hand is being forced into closing some schools. I don't have a real handle on the school closures up there regarding their student population. But what I can tell you is. All the school districts, as of two years ago through state law, have to provide a listing of their unrestricted fund balances.
And I looked at those and Fairbanks is in trouble. Fairbanks reports that their unrestricted fund balance is $31,779,000. And negative. They're in the hole, $31.7 million in Fairbanks. Their fund, their unrestricted fund, they owe money is what you're saying. They owe money. It's like your savings account. You owe the bank or the credit union $31.7 million. They're going to...
I don't understand how you can do that. On the other hand, Kenai is not in bad shape. Kenai has about $11.2 million in the green. So they have a surplus. And the Anchorage School District has $50 million in unrestricted fund balance. $50 million. This is as of October last year. These are the piggy bank savings.
that districts can use to fund emergencies etc now the state law says you cannot have over 10 percent in your fund unreserved unassigned fund balance but you have to have a minimum of five percent
The Anchorage School District has set their policy at 8%. So they have money that they can take out of their piggy bank instead of out of your PFD piggy bank to pay down some of their... future let's call uh debts if you want to call it that but uh i i know i'm sure i know melissa knows a lot about fair maxine she's president of their school board but i would suggest they need to go back and revisit
their employee contracts go through them scrub them and tell the uh the bargaining units to come to the table otherwise there will be no schools um and and i don't know what the percentage of Personnel salaries and benefits is probably like Anchorage, 85% to 87% of their operating budget.
Right. And that's true. That's true in any organization, be it governmental or private, is most of the time 75 to 85 percent of the costs are wrapped up in personnel. Those are the personnel costs. Right. So the. the alaska school board association has went out to all their districts and asked them for some salary information and for melissa the average salary and benefits in fairbanks is over 114 000 a school year right
That's a significant cost for sure. 15 seconds here, David. Let's jump back into this and continue on. The Michael Duke Show, again, like and share if you haven't done either. Now's the time to do it. Let's get back to it. Common Sense, Liberty-based, free-thinking radio. David Boyle, our guest. Here we go. The Michael Duke Show. Not your daddy.
Wait, sorry, not your daddy? Ooh, not your daddy's talk radio. Whew, I was scared for a second. Thought we were going down. Here's Michael Dukes and the show. Okay, finishing up here, one final segment this morning with David Boyle, senior contributor for Must Read Alaska, education advocate, friend of the show. We're just looking at the fund balances, the unrestricted fund balances, which are essentially the savings accounts of the piggy banks.
for the various school districts, and some have got issues. Now, Fairbanks is in the hole $30 million in their fund balance, which I don't even know how you get a negative balance in your fund like that. I mean, there's some irresponsibility going on there, and I have questions on that.
Some of the other places, Matsu, Kenai, you know, $11, $10, $11, $15 million. You said Anchorage has got $50 million in its fund balance, which sounds good until you see that they're running a $107 million deficit. obviously they can't cover with their fund balance. So what, you know.
How do we fix this? I guess, David, and I asked you this earlier, but let me re-ask it again in kind of a, in general, how do we fix this problem across the state? Because it's not just one district that has a deficit. It's like every... district has a deficit. Melissa said the deficit in Fairbanks goes back more than seven years.
I mean, she's only been on the school board for three, I guess, three years, something like that. But I mean, it goes back seven years. So this is a continuing problem. So what is in your mind, as you've been watching this as an outside player all these years, what in your mind is the solution?
to fixing i guess two parts both the financial issue and The achievement issue, I guess you answered the achievement issue earlier when you said they should be giving more props to charter schools and things that work, things that have a measurable. have a measurable response and produce a measurable result. But in the financial, how do we fix that? Well, Michael, let me add one more thing to how we fix schools.
Another important factor in, I've always said there are three factors in a good education, and that includes a good curriculum, an effective classroom teacher, and... an informed participating parent. And we have too many parents that are not involved in their kids' education. And we need an effort.
and it probably can come from the governor, I would guess, some type of program to really incentivize parents to get active in their kids' education and to know what's actually happening in the classroom like so many parents learned back during COVID, looking over their kids' shoulders. and getting them out of the brick and mortars into correspondence programs or homeschool programs. Okay. Gosh, I forgot the question. Thanks for my senior moment. No, no. So how do we, I mean, again.
You mentioned it earlier that Scholastic, the achievement, if you want to fix the achievement, you look for things that have succeeded and done a good job, like charter schools, and you expand those options, either by allowing more charter schools or adopting some of the... policies and some of the things that are being done in charter schools in the regular brick and mortar school. So you kind of answered the scholastic achievement question, but the money question, how do we fix?
If every school district in the state is running a deficit, how do we fix that? And is it a one-time funding? Is it an ongoing funding? Is it a funding issue at all? Or should there be... More of a scolding, I guess, given to the districts to say you've got to learn to live more within your means or.
You've got to increase your local contribution. Now, I know some places are close to being maxed out on their local contributions, but I know in Fairbanks, I think they're at 74 or 76 percent of what they could be. So do they go back to the citizens or. Should they be living more within their means? What you know, what what is what is your what's your thought? Well, I think it's maybe a combination of both. They could probably increase the local contribution. Anchorage has maxed theirs out.
up to the tax cap. The other thing is, I think we need to add, I do agree, we probably need to add some more funding outside of the BSA due to the inflation, for example, when supplies go up, et cetera. But if you I mean, acreage is going to be blown out of the water if this. teachers union contract gets approved as is, let's say, I'm sure it won't get, well, I'm not sure, but it probably won't get approved for a 15% across the board salary increase.
Well, even if it's half that. Even if it's half that. Even if it's 7%. I mean, you have a $107 million deficit. Your personnel account for 80%, 85% of your overall cost, and you're going to increase those costs by 7%. seven percent right out of the gate i mean what's that i mean it's it's that's not sustainable no it's not sustainable and let me tell you the other piece um first of all
I don't understand K-12 education. When you lose students, you get more money. When you gain students, you get more money. It's not a zero sum game. the other thing that's really really costing the school districts is health insurance i mean it's now they they go currently the anchorage school district which i'm more familiar with pays $22,000 a year for each teacher union member. That's going to go up to over $25,000 a year. So there's...
This is why they're asking, one of the reasons they're asking for money. The Kenai, Kenai is, they've got a tremendous amount of money going in for their health insurance per member. And I don't know enough about it, but I need to research it. So what I'm saying is health insurance is a tremendous cost to every school district in the state. Well, and there was a proposal. I know Sarah Vance has talked about a proposal of consolidating the health care plans for.
All 53 districts and I think part of the university and something they were talking about consolidating it. And that could potentially save upwards of I think the number was 50 million dollars a year or something like that, because these are.
All these different schools, they're on different plans. There's no, you know, quality or, you know, bulk discount, I guess I should say, on any of these things where if you had instead of a bunch of different single districts dealing with somebody, if you had 50. different districts, you could really create that kind of economy of scale kind of thing going on. And yet they've pushed back against it. Yeah, there was a bill a few years ago.
I think it was then Senator Dunleavy, but I'm not positive, to put all the teachers, all the school district employees on the Alaska CARES state health insurance plan. that would save millions and millions of money because i have to do a little research but in the past i remember uh for a member to be it was like 15 14 to 15 000 a year to be on that plan the state's health insurance plan for the state employees versus 18,000 back at that same time for an employee to be on the teachers union.
health insurance plan so right there there was a savings of about four thousand dollars per union member millions of dollars um that bill i i think it was yeah that bill it was interesting of the five large school districts uh only the anchorage school district opposed that bill Right. And that's because all their money, health insurance money, the teachers goes into the public education health trust, which is managed by the.
The union. Oh, gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. The teachers union in Alaska. Yeah. Public Employees Health Trust. So it becomes more about money and control and power than it does about actually educating the students, which is part of the problem. Yes. We're going to get into this more as the session goes on. We're out of time for today, but we're going to get into this more as the session goes on.
I really would love to see you kind of spread your wings a little bit more outside of Anchorage and get some more information on Fairbanks and the Kenai and everything else. Because, you know, we need some more information on this. This is going to be the biggest issue that we're going to face, I think, as far as funding-wise. I mean, if they get the $1,900 BSA, it's half a billion dollar increase.
in perpetuity every year moving forward. So it's going to be a tough thing. All right. Well, David, thank you so much for coming on board. I appreciate you joining us. Hold the line for just a second. Folks, we're out of time. Tomorrow's Firearms Friday. David Codray is going to be with us. Tomorrow's also the final day that you can vote on the K-Pen. Do you want Charlie Kirk? That's coming up. Thanks, my friend. We'll see you later.
All right, David, any final thoughts here before I let you go? No, not really, Michael. Just as you said, K-12 education is going to be the big issue. in the state, in the legislature, I see that Senator Klayman, Matt Klayman from Anchorage has sponsored, I believe it's SB 36 regarding increased funding for K-12 education.
I haven't read the entire bill. I just started looking at it. It was filed yesterday, or came across the floor yesterday, and it's in Senate Education, which is chaired by Senator Lukey Tobin. So anyway, look forward to listening and coming back.
Talk to you about the other school districts. Yeah, no, I mean, if we can get the information and then have a side by side comparison. But like you said, sometimes it's hard to get. I mean, Kevin McCabe and Melissa are having a conversation in the chat room about how.
the deed website says one thing on students the other the k you know the north stars website says something yeah i mean it's hard if we don't we can't decision making is easy once you have all the facts said george patten right but if you can't get the facts or you get conflicting facts because they're all coming from different areas we need more transparency in this to be able to try and understand it
I agree with both of those, Kevin, and the other individual that I've noted that on the state's web page where they have the per student cost, it's different than what you see in the audited report.
the acfr that that's a complete disconnect no okay in fact i just saw the kevin just sent me the the latest from the state report card website uh and it says that we're spending twelve thousand five hundred and whatever whatever it was here the the number the magic number 23 502 spending per student for the 23 24 school year 23 000 per student and we still can't
We still can't get what we need. Where is that? Stay wide? Stay wide. Well, Michael, the other problem is we still don't have the student count. Yeah. That was taken in October. Yeah. Boy, it should be nice to get that, wouldn't it? All right. Well, thanks. Thanks so much for coming on board. I appreciate it, David. Thank you for being part of it and sharing with us. I hope you continue to write more for Must Read and we'll...
We'll see where we go from here. Thanks for coming on board. Appreciate it. All right, folks, we are out of time. We got more coming up tomorrow with Firearms Friday. Be kind. Love one another. Live well. David Codrea tomorrow. That should be fun. Appreciate you coming on board. We'll see you then. Have a great day. Radio Skin. And now we are slimy lizard internet people. It's the Michael Duke Show.