Alaskans who have ideas on how the state might improve its struggling public education system are being encouraged to weigh in on a host of topics such as charter schools, curriculum, sex discrimination, student and parent rights, student testing, school accountability, academic standards, student discipline, special education, funding streams, building and maintenance plans, reading intervention strategies, school safety and much more.
In accord with Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administrative order directing all state agencies to review and streamline regulations to improve quality, transparency, and efficiency, the Alaska Dept. of Education is seeking stakeholder input through a series of ongoing stakeholder meetings and written feedback on specific regulations.
The goal is to ensure all regulations are clearly written, legally sound, non-redundant, effective and supported by a demonstrated need. Additionally, the governor wants to reduce the unnecessary regulatory burden on Alaskans.
Individuals, industries and community groups are encouraged to weigh in. Once the public comment period ends, the education department will either adopt the proposed ideas without further notice or decide to take no action. The final language specific regulations may be different from what the stakeholders propose.
TAKING ACTION
— The next two meetings will be on Dec. 4 and Dec. 9. For a complete list of meeting dates, Zoom links and topics under consideration, click here.
— A number of meetings have already occurred, but the written public comment period is still open for most topics. Additionally, there are multiple upcoming zoom meetings and written comment periods scheduled to open throughout December.
— For more information, call (907) 465-2800 or send an email to eed.contact@alaska.gov.
4 Comments
Do we still hold kids back in elementary grades here? If so it’s a step in the right direction and we can brainstorm the next thing, but if not we seriously need to bring that back to help these kids succeed in the long run.
Also ASDs plan to add childcare centers into low enrollment schools with empty classes is genuinely fantastic as long as the vast majority of that money goes back into schools. It could help stop this constant consolidation of schools into bigger and bigger class sizes, stops giving lazy teachers excuses because (as I heard when my sons teacher said she’s completely unable to give him any one on one attention because ThEre’S toO mAnY kIdS, pathetic), introduces young daycare kids to the school setting, fills the daycare gap, could be way more affordable for parents and we can start funding these schools and bringing non-core programs back. It’s about the only thing ASD has planned to do right. I seriously hope it works, it could benefit us state wide.
Let the money follow the student, not the school in the form of vouchers so parents can send their children to whichever school they choose. The only way ‘public education’ will improve is if it has to compete with schools that are already do a better job with better educational results/outcomes. Then ‘public education’ will either step up and be competitive in terms of results or it will fail and die out opening up better avenues for education (economics calls this creative destruction); either way the student will be better off, and isn’t that what actually matters?
First paragraph shows it’s all about divide and conquer, everybody wants everything, so everybody’s encouraged to weigh in on a host of topics, guaranteeing nothing improves.
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Promise everybody everything to improve struggling public schools, was everybody just swindled into a position where they can’t say “no” to small, fair, broad-based sales and income taxes to pay for everything they want? Was stiffing people with state sales and income taxes the intention all along?
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Teachers union, legislator, school board official, contractor, lobbyist, government official, mainstream media are “stake holders”. Working stiffs, parent/taxpayers may be useful noisemakers but, perhaps thankfully, they’re not “stake holders” in this racket.
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Could it be that struggling public schools actually can’t be “improved”, as parent/taxpayers understand the word?
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If Department of Education officials, school boards, and teachers unions really wanted to improve public schools, would they not have figured out by now what makes public schools so successful in other places, would they not be doing it right here, right now?
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Are they so incompetent, corrupt, and perverted, that they can’t, or won’t, do what makes public education successful in other places?
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If so, are we being brainwashed to believe that public education can’t, or won’t, improve without the same officials who make it “struggle” now, without the same officials getting even more money?
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Are parent/taxpayers supposed to believe it’s out of the question to: (a) conduct an outside, forensic audit of education industry finance and management practices, (b) ditch the current education-industry regime, and (c) bring in a team of top educators and administrators to start up, and operate, a successful, classic public-education program?
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Anyone feeling a big “yes” to these questions might wonder whether we’re looking at things all wrong. If the public education industry’s going to do whatever they want anyway, why shouldn’t parents just pull their kids out of the failing school system?
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(1) More than a few parent/taxpayers are rescuing their children from public education.
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(2) Eagle River is about to separate from Anchorage due in large part to parents’ desire for a decent education system with none of the nastiness that infests Anchorage School District.
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(3) “Despite receiving approximately 500 community complaints about pornographic material in the public-school library, the Fairbanks School Board refused to revise school library policy.”
(https://mustreadalaska.com/fairbanks-school-board-prioritizes-pornographic-literature/)
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Bottom line: Are these clues that “struggling public schools” can’t be fixed, especially by the very people responsible for breaking them?
AND WHO IS IT EXACTLY THAT WANTS IDEAS ON WHAT TO DO ABOUT ALASKAS EDUACATIONAL PROBLEMS???? DUNLEAVY? IF SO I HAVE ONE PIECE OF ADVICE. TAKE YOUR FAILED SELF AND YOUR ENTIRE ADMINISTRATION ON A LONG ONE WAY TRIP TO NORTH KOREA AND CHECK INTO THE HOTEL/ RESORT, KNOWN FOR ITS EXCELLENT ACCOMADATIONS AND HOSPITALITY. LITTLE ROCKETMANS PARADISE! YOUR EXPERIENCE THERE OUGHT TO CLEARLY GIVE YOU A CLUE AS TO WHAT WE DONT WANT!