One of the pieces of legislation that is currently working its way through the state’s legislature is a bill that will fund the Governor’s Performance Scholarship Program. If funded, the program will provide post-secondary support for students who take a prescribed number of courses while earning a good grade point average. The goal of the program is two-fold. The first is to provide an incentive to students to keep their foot on the academic gas pedal and the second is to bolster the number of students staying in Alaska to attend a college or training school. The scholarship is only good for Alaska institutions. Ironically, the move to add money for the scholarship comes at a time when our school district will likely not receive enough revenue to maintain our current level of service. Is helping students to pay for college more important than spending money on their K-12 education? Probably not, but there is a reservation by many that the money devoted to K-12 is not having the desired effect. So the question that begs to be answered is, is KPBSD making good use of its public funds?
From my perspective, the answer is yes. We can point to small, but steady improvements in a variety of tangible areas, e.g., test scores or graduation rate and also to the more subtle indicators such as number of incidences of poor student behavior and increased level of staff collaboration as evidence that the funding of our schools is well spent. It is important that our stakeholders share my opinion and if you don’t, then let your principal or teacher or one of us at the district office know where you feel that we are not holding up our end of the funding bargain.
On Tuesday night our assembly passed a resolution to fund our schools (for next year) at the same level as they did this year. While this does not make us whole, it does, during these tight times, indicate that there is a basic confidence in what we are doing for our students each day. I am appreciative of the timing of the resolution because it allows us to move forward with the issuance of contracts. I encourage everyone who has a stake in this conversation to have an answer to the question, are we making good use of our public funds?
Making the most of funding
One of the pieces of legislation that is currently working its way through the state’s legislature is a bill that will fund the Governor’s Performance Scholarship Program. If funded, the program will provide post-secondary support for students who take a prescribed number of courses while earning a good grade point average. The goal of the program is two-fold. The first is to provide an incentive to students to keep their foot on the academic gas pedal and the second is to bolster the number of students staying in Alaska to attend a college or training school. The scholarship is only good for Alaska institutions. Ironically, the move to add money for the scholarship comes at a time when our school district will likely not receive enough revenue to maintain our current level of service. Is helping students to pay for college more important than spending money on their K-12 education? Probably not, but there is a reservation by many that the money devoted to K-12 is not having the desired effect. So the question that begs to be answered is, is KPBSD making good use of its public funds?
From my perspective, the answer is yes. We can point to small, but steady improvements in a variety of tangible areas, e.g., test scores or graduation rate and also to the more subtle indicators such as number of incidences of poor student behavior and increased level of staff collaboration as evidence that the funding of our schools is well spent. It is important that our stakeholders share my opinion and if you don’t, then let your principal or teacher or one of us at the district office know where you feel that we are not holding up our end of the funding bargain.
On Tuesday night our assembly passed a resolution to fund our schools (for next year) at the same level as they did this year. While this does not make us whole, it does, during these tight times, indicate that there is a basic confidence in what we are doing for our students each day. I am appreciative of the timing of the resolution because it allows us to move forward with the issuance of contracts. I encourage everyone who has a stake in this conversation to have an answer to the question, are we making good use of our public funds?