Alaska would more than triple the funding it devotes to school construction and maintenance projects next year under a budget approved this month by the state Legislature. The funding, which awaits Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s signature, follows reporting by KYUK, ProPublica and NPR last year that documented a severe health and safety crisis inside the buildings used daily for public education.

The bill would allocate more than $148 million toward construction and maintenance in the 2027 fiscal year, up from $40 million in fiscal 2026, which ends June 30. The new budget line is an effort to help with millions in backlogged major maintenance needs for schools around the state. Years of lacking investment in Alaska’s public schools have resulted in leaking roofs, broken water pipes and failing foundations. If the governor signs off, it would be the largest allocation in more than a decade. The money could pay for more than 30 projects but would still cover only a fraction of the requested repairs.

Some of the worst conditions exist inside rural public schools that serve predominantly Indigenous student populations and are often used as emergency shelters. In December, former students and concerned parents told the State Board of Education about squalid conditions inside Alaska’s only state-owned boarding school. Their testimony further fueled efforts by lawmakers to help unburden cash-strapped rural school districts in communities where residents don’t pay taxes to help fund education.

As Alaska legislators wrestled with statewide budget shortfalls, money for education, including for school construction and maintenance, “bubbled to the top,” according to state Sen. Lyman Hoffman, an Alaska Native Democrat who represents the largest rural school district in the state. “Even though the whole state is having a problem balancing its checkbook, at the top of the list is education,” he said during an Alaska Senate Finance Committee meeting in March,........

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