If Alaska lawmakers want input on how to improve Alaska’s dismal public school system, they shouldn’t rely exclusively on the entrenched educational establishment that has presided over the failed institution, but inquire from actual parents and students.
This is the basic argument behind a letter writing campaign being organized by Parents’ Rights In Education Alaska.
The Education Funding Task Force is a group of six Alaska legislators who are holding several meetings to brainstorm ways of improving Alaska’s state-run school system. To date, the majority-Democrat task force has only solicited educational bureaucrats and union leaders to the invite-only discussion.
The group’s next meeting is on Oct. 30, and parental rights advocates are demanding to be heard.
“The Alaska Task Force on Education will make recommendations that could reshape K-12 education across our state for years to come,” a suggested form letter to lawmakers states. “Yet, despite the profound impact of these decisions on families, the task force includes no parents or student representatives.”
ALASKA WATCHMAN DIRECT TO YOUR INBOX
Instead, the only invited speakers are representatives from the NEA-Alaska teachers’ union, the Alaska Municipal League, Alaska Association of School Board and the Alaska Council of School Administrators.”
Typically, these groups focus on lobbying state lawmakers for increased spending on schools but give little heed to solutions that involve expanding school choice, supporting the growing homeschool movement or enacting accountability measures for public school performance.
The draft letter from the parental rights group notes that parents and students experience the real world effects of a failing system, including learning gaps, absenteeism and inequitable access to quality education.
“If the task force is serious about accountability and student success, it must include parent and student voices as equal participants, not silent observers,” the letter states. “Alaska families deserve more than a livestream link – they deserve representation and respect in the process determining their children’s future.”
The letter ends by urging the task force to formally appoint parent and student representatives before holding any more meetings or making recommendations to the wider Legislature.
“Decisions about Alaska’s children should never be made without those who know their needs best,” the letter concludes. “Parents must have a seat at the table. Alaska kids deserve nothing less.”
TAKING ACTION
— To read and/or sign onto the letter, click here.
— Click here to contact members of the Joint Committee Task Force on Education Funding.
— Click here for details about the Oct. 30 meeting for the Task Force on Education Funding.
3 Comments
When I saw this list at end of session I laughed. All of the participants voted to override the Governor’s veto of education. Even the Republicans on the committee are actual democrats, or at least they vote that way!
We cannot read the petition and sign on because it is on facebook and we have no access to facebook. Is there another place to read the letter and join?
What an elegant setup this could be, like lions and wolves inviting sheep to discuss what’s for lunch.
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Actual parents and students, full of righteous indignation, invite themselves to the delphi meeting, walk right into the trap, baited with something irresistibly juicy: “We’ll give you everything you want!”
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Then the trap’s sprung: “Of course, in return, you want to give up your PFD’s, pay your fair share of small, sustainable sales and income taxes so we can afford to give you everything you want.”
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And parent and student representatives will sit in stupefied silence, wondering what they just did to themselves, experiencing the real world effects of an education industry seemingly run by racketeers, incompetents, and perverts, accountable to nobody, whose main purpose in life is the ruthless acquisition of money and power, parent and student representatives be damned.
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Moral of this story is the only people dumber than those who deliberately broke our education system are those who put their faith, trust, and money in that same crowd to fix it.