August 28, 2025 Tom Begich

Opinion Piece

When I served as a State Senator, the most common visitors to my office were parents
and teachers. Parents expressed concern that their children were falling behind in
reading or struggling to keep up. Teachers were frustrated by the lack of resources
needed to help students succeed early on. Their message was clear: our children
deserve a better chance, and Alaska must do more to provide it.

Those conversations shaped my time in office. They reminded me that education is
more than a policy debate. It involves families, students, and teachers who dedicate
their lives to helping them. It’s about whether a second grader will learn to read in time
to succeed in third grade. It’s about whether a teenager will graduate prepared for the
workforce or higher education. And ultimately, it’s about whether Alaska will have a
skilled workforce and a strong economy.

This is why I focused much of my legislative and professional career on improving
Alaska’s public education. When I was first elected, I introduced legislation to create
access to high-quality Pre-K, because the evidence showed that when kids start early,
they are more likely to thrive throughout life. That work was eventually strengthened by
the Alaska Reads Act, a bipartisan bill that I championed and we passed in 2022
focused on improving reading outcomes through third grade while phasing in Pre-K
statewide. We knew that if students were strong readers by third grade, they would be
far more likely to succeed in every subject after that. But it had to start with access to
voluntary Pre-K.

Passing this bill required Republicans, Democrats, and Independents to work together,
and we did. The Alaska Reads Act was the most comprehensive education reform in
decades, and it showed what was possible when politics took a backseat to the needs
voiced by families and teachers.

But legislation alone is not always enough. It takes resources to turn policy into results.
Districts need stability to plan ahead. Families need to know their children will have
access to opportunities no matter where in Alaska they live. This is why the recent
historic override of the governor’s veto of $50 million in education funding mattered so
much: it shows what happens when we listen to Alaskans.

Still, the work is not finished. Teachers are stretched too thin. Parents are worried that
their children will not get the support they need in their earliest years. Too many school
districts remain trapped in cycles of uncertainty, unsure whether they will have the
resources necessary to hire teachers, reduce class sizes, and provide early
interventions. Because of this, so many families have left the state for more
opportunities elsewhere.

This is why I am running for Governor. I will listen to Alaskans, just as I did when I was a
Senator. I will listen to parents who sit across the table and tell me their child deserves
better. I will listen to teachers who explain what it takes to give students a real chance to
succeed. And I will listen to students themselves, who deserve to know that the state’s
leaders are working for their future.

Being Governor means never losing sight of why we do this work. I remember those
conversations in my office — the parents who wanted their daughter to succeed early
on, the teachers who worried about spending all their time working to catch kids up
instead of moving them forward. Their voices stay with me to this day.

Alaska cannot afford to fall further behind in education. We cannot accept being near
the bottom nationally in reading and graduation rates. We cannot afford to lose talented
teachers because we lack stability and vision. What we can do, and what I commit to
doing as your Governor, is to bring families, teachers, and communities together to build
the strong public education system our children deserve.

The historic veto override was an important and necessary step, and I thank the
legislature for uniting in a bipartisan way to accomplish that. There is more work to be
done. I will be the Governor who builds upon that and brings ideas together to ensure
that every Alaska child has the opportunity to succeed.