JUNEAU, Alaska — After several failures and near misses, the Alaska Legislature on Wednesday passed a bipartisan education package that multiple lawmakers say could potentially survive Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto pen.

After almost a decade of flat funding, House Bill 57 contains a $700 boost to the Base Student Allocation, the state’s per-student funding formula. The measure also includes education policies intended to improve student outcomes.

Dunleavy has not said publicly whether he will veto the measure, sign it or allow it to pass into law without his signature. A spokesperson for the governor’s office on Wednesday said Dunleavy wanted to see his policy priorities included, referring back to a social media post from last week.

The Legislature approved the bill on a combined 48-11 vote, above the 40-vote threshold to override a potential veto by Dunleavy. But Dunleavy could still veto education funding from the budget, which would require support to override from 45 of 60 legislators.

Anchorage Democratic Sen. Löki Tobin said before Wednesday’s final vote that the measure “strikes a balance” and “signals hope” for schools. She said the funding may not be adequate for all school districts, but it would help retain teachers, reduce class sizes and keep beloved extracurricular activities.

“It is a good bill, making a step in the right direction,” she said.

School administrators in multiple districts have said that Alaska’s public education system is in crisis. Education advocates had called for a $1,000 BSA boost. Earlier in April, legislators failed to override Dunleavy’s veto of a school funding increase of that size. At a cost of over $250 million per year, many in the Legislature said that would be unaffordable with the state’s dire fiscal outlook.

The $700 per-student funding boost has been supported as a compromise by lawmakers. It represents a roughly $5 million increase on school funding approved by the Legislature last year on a one-time basis.

Lawmakers also added policies intended to improve Alaska’s bottom-of-the-nation test scores. Some of Dunleavy’s policy priorities were included, but not all of them.

Supporters said the measure would be a funding increase for all public school students. Dunleavy had called for additional funding for home-schooled students on top of what they would receive through a BSA boost, but that was rejected by the Legislature.

House Bill 57 includes: plans to limit cellphone use in schools; a boost for student transportation costs; provisions to ease the process of forming new charter schools and to make it harder for local school districts to revoke existing charters; provisions to establish target class sizes to limit overcrowding in classrooms; and the establishment of a legislative task force to study education funding and how to allow students to enroll in school districts other than the ones in which they reside.

The bill would also fund career and technical education and grants for reading initiatives. But that funding would only be paid if the Legislature approves a revenue-raising measure this year to fund them.

The House broadly approved the measure Wednesday on a 31-8 vote after little debate. Republican minority Reps. Jamie Allard, DeLena Johnson, Kevin McCabe, Mike Prax, George Rauscher, Rebecca Schwanke, Cathy Tilton and Frank Tomaszewski voted no. Anchorage GOP Rep. David Nelson was absent from Wednesday’s vote.

The Senate approved the education bill on Monday, but drafting errors were later discovered that lawmakers said could have rendered the measure unconstitutional. The Senate on Wednesday broadly passed the corrected bill on a 17-3 vote. Republican minority Sens. Mike Shower, Shelley Hughes and Robert Myers voted no.

Hughes and Shower supported the package on Monday. Both said they supported funding for reading initiatives and career and technical education, but they were troubled by the requirement for new state revenue to fund them.

Wasilla GOP Sen. Rob Yundt, a freshman and minority member, said the contingency for new revenues was a “creative solution” that he helped craft as a compromise with the Democrat-dominated Senate majority. He said the education package is “unbelievable,” combining funding with policies that could make a tangible difference to student outcomes, such as by limiting cellphone use in schools.

“We’re giving stability to the schools financially that they don’t have every year,” Yundt said.

Yundt and minority Republican Sens. James Kaufman and Cronk on Monday publicly committed to support the measure, even if Dunleavy vetoes it.

Members of the Democrat-dominated Senate majority thanked the Republican Senate minority for helping to craft the compromise education package. But some senators said the funding increase would be insufficient for school districts that are in the midst of enacting steep cuts to programs, staff and more.

“We’ve secured a short-term solution, maybe. But our long-term needs still need to be addressed,” said Nikiski Republican Sen. Jesse Bjorkman, a former teacher. “And until we are able to come up with a bigger solution that provides the resources that students vitally need in order to have an effective and appropriate education, we will be spending a lot more time until we come up with that solution.”

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