House Education Committee hears two nominees for Professional Teaching Practices Commission

The House Education Committee held confirmation hearings on March 20, 2025, for two governor's appointees to the Professional Teaching Practices Commission (PTPC): Catherine Baird and Angela Alston. Both nominees answered committee questions about ethics, educator support and classroom experience. No members of the public testified for either nominee.

Catherine Baird, a third-grade teacher at a Title I school in Fairbanks and a former law clerk and assistant district attorney, told the committee she would bring impartiality and investigation experience to the commission. "Approaching each case in an unbiased manner is a fundamental tenant of our judiciary," Baird said of her legal background, adding that the PTPC "must approach each complaint with neutrality and weigh all the information." She described classroom conditions and practice, saying, "As an educator, my responsibility is to my students. It is my job to ensure that they're not only learning academically, but that they are in a safe environment at school." Baird told the committee she uses targeted small-group instruction to support students identified under the Alaska Reads Act and reported a class size of 33 third graders this year as an example of current classroom pressures.

Angela Alston, an assistant professor of secondary education at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a former K-12 teacher in the Bering Strait School District for 18 years, emphasized her rural-teaching and teacher-preparation experience. Alston said she supports strict adherence to the PTPC code of ethics and approaches complaints without assumptions: "Each case and each complaint needs to be considered on its own merits... I would work to not make any assumptions going in." She described place-based teaching methods she uses with pre-service teachers, including community-focused primary-source research and mapping classroom connections to local land and resources.

Committee members asked each nominee how they would approach ethics complaints. Both described a neutral, evidence-focused disposition and the intent to apply the existing code of ethics consistently. The committee closed public testimony and signed a hearing report noting the hearings were conducted in accordance with AS 39.05.080; the report signature does not indicate committee members' future votes on confirmation.

No formal confirmation vote was recorded in the hearing transcript.