It’s been a busy week for the Nome Board of Education, with members recently returning from the Association of Alaska School Boards conference in Anchorage. In addition to routine matters at this week’s meeting, the board discussed what legislative priorities they’ll submit to Nome’s City Council to lobby for in Juneau.
“These are resolutions that the Association of Alaska School Boards put together as their marching orders for the coming year—they are belief statements; they are items that they think are important for public education in our state,” said School Board President Betsy Brennan.
Superintendent Steve Gast indicated that Nome’s first three priorities, which concern facilities, will be of most interest to the city. The board hopes to recover the cost of district-wide lighting replacement and Nome Elementary School’s gym flooring, and to receive funding to replace Nome Beltz’s electrical service and generator system.
The remainder of the twenty priorities aren’t specific to Nome, but they tap into broader rural education issues that impact the Nome school system. For instance, Brennan’s suggestion of opposing school vouchers, which would allow public tax money to go toward private schooling and possibly home schooling.
“There’s already a lot of people going after the money that we use for public education,” said Brennan. “Non-public schools getting another piece of that pie would take away from public schools, meaning us.”
The board agreed to add Brennan’s suggestion to Nome’s list. Other priorities include: focus on grade-level proficiency for kindergarten to third grade students and native language program development. Gast said the finalized list will be presented to the city council at meeting later this month.
And these priorities are even more important because of a tension Gast said he senses between the state legislature and rural schools. At AASB, the 45 superintendents from around the state were briefed on the new makeup of the legislature.
“It was not exceptionally good news for us as far as how the legislature is leaning right now as far as funding is concerned,” said Gast.
One state senator urged schools to come forward with new and “innovative” ideas in order to receive funding.
“That’s when I spoke up and said it’s very frustrating for the rural districts to talk about innovative things when we’re doing innovative things—we have a five-star charter school, we have a five-star extension school, we’ve got an elementary school that’s moved up to a 4-star school, we’ve got distance learning, we’ve got all these different things—those are innovative. They’re not happening everywhere,” said Gast. “It’s very frustrating. And a lot of the rural districts said the same thing—they keep saying they want innovation and we keep giving it to them and then they keep saying that’s not enough.”
Gast said he spoke with other superintendents about how to best work with the legislature and secure the funding they need to keep their programs running smoothly.
The meeting wrapped up with a few ideas from AASB to improve the school board’s internal functioning, such as developing a budget year-to-date sheet to keep finances clear and implementing a school board evaluation for the community to fill out.
