JUNEAU — The Senate Education Committee on Monday discussed a plan that would change how the state intervenes in struggling school districts, while a House bill takes a different approach to the same issue.
Intervention in districts stems from the state’s 2008 response to the Moore v. Alaska case, which showed the state failed to meet its constitutional requirement of providing education because it had ineffective oversight. The case also resulted in a proposed $18 million settlement between the state and rural schools.
A law passed in 2008 gives the Department of Education and Early Development the ability to provide a variety of responses when interacting with struggling districts. For less severe cases, the first step is to provide extra training for teachers and to make on-site efforts to improve students’ skills.
Those efforts have been lauded as successful by district officials who have testified to the House Education Committee.
But controversy lies in the next method employed by state officials. The state can appoint a trustee who can dictate curriculum changes and other aspects of school decision-making.
Officials from Yupiit School District, the only to ever be appointed a trustee, told the House Education Committee their voice is not being heard in the process.
Legislators agree that is a problem in need of a fix.
A bill commissioned by Sen. Joe Thomas, D-Fairbanks, for the Senate Education Committee, SB 194, would affirm local involvement and draw from lessons learned from similar policies enacted in Michigan, Texas and elsewhere. That bill would also rename the intervention process “revitalization” and would consider community struggles such as substance abuse and unemployment when considering how to craft a fix for those districts.
Meanwhile, House Education Chairman Rep. Alan Dick, R-McGrath, suggests in HB 256 that the process needs a complete overhaul that should begin with removal of the state’s ability to send anyone with the type of authority currently allowed to a trustee. Dick has said after the intervention process is repealed, he would then work to describe in legislation a process that learns from mistakes and uses what has worked.
Discussion of SB 194 will continue at a Senate Education Committee hearing Wednesday; HB 256 could be heard before the House Education Committee Friday.
Comments (4)
Add commentWHAT!
our legislators actually can not agree on how to allow the DOE to intervene after the district has failed to do its job. It's elementary Dear Watson: you replace infective management by the district. You do not leave the incompetent in place in hope they might do a better job in a few years while students continue to underachieve.
Run public schools by committee is more better
Rural school districts are often more about providing jobs for people who otherwise would be hair dressers or janitors than it is about educating students. This "school intervention" rope-a-dope is all really about trying to extort more money out of the state for union teachers who are liberal and vote for the likes of the Dim Dems in the Senate.
AKDONN
Once again your comments bring nothing to the table but your obvious biased opinion about the Education system... Why don't you back your comments up with some factual information and not your normal opinionated drool...
Unions are the problem?
Really?
The best public education systems are in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Vermont. The strongest teachers' unions are in those states as well.
Meanwhile, the worst public education systems are in the Deep South (Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, New Mexico) where teachers' unions are the weakest.
But let's not allow facts to get in the way of our opinions. Let's not get bogged down by what Parnell calls "analysis paralysis."
Let's keep listening to Fox News about how teachers (who are paying off school loans, a house loan, and driving Subarus from the 1990s) get paid too much and their unions are crippling society while the same pundits also claim that taxing the top 1% the same or more as a middle class worker is class warfare.