The biggest issue facing the Haines Borough isn’t the Lutak Dock. Amd it’s not the Constantine mine. It’s not the price of fish or the future of the cruise ship industry.
The biggest issue facing our town is the funding of the Haines Borough School District and whether the State of Alaska – and more broadly, we Alaskans – have the conviction and fortitude to maintain quality public schools.
Public schools statewide are struggling, including ours. Alaska Gov. Michael Dunleavy and a few extremist state legislators are starving our public schools because they don’t believe in public education and would just as soon allow our schools to wither on the vine.
That’s why the Legislatures hasn’t made any permanent increase to school funding in more than seven years, which explains soaring staff turnover that is crippling Haines schools and that, if left unchecked, will eventually devastate our town.
It’s simple math.
Haines is a difficult place to live. The cost of living is high, the climate is terrible and the amenities are few. Most of the world chooses not to live here. That includes school teachers, who can earn more pay and better benefits down south where life isn’t as tough or expensive.
It wasn’t always that way. From the late 1970s into the 1990s, Alaska teachers were among the best paid in the USA, with a retirement and benefits to match. As the result of the competition for jobs, Haines hired very skilled teachers who put down stakes here.
When young couples inquired about the quality of our school district, they heard about strong programs led by trusted, long-time teachers who had taught entire families of students, sometimes an entire generation of families of students.
In terms of community building, that was better than money in the bank. It encouraged smart, hard-working, thoughtful young people to raise families here, and those families helped build the town as we know it.
If those same young people back in the 1980s and 1990s were told, instead: “Well, our schools are basically good but there’s a lot of teacher turnover and offerings are a bit limited. Teacher pay is low and the retirement is just a 401K,” would those families have chosen to put down roots in this town?
Here’s more math. Small-town parents and administrators understand that a critical mass of bright, energetic students in a single class will lift tmiddling and struggling classmates to an elevated level of achievement. In this way, top students – the ones from smart and caring families – carry not only their classes but also our district and our town.
We can’t enroll those students if we can’t get their parents to decide to live in Haines, and in many cases parents will decide based on the quality, number and longevity of teachers here. A good school serving as a magnet for healthy families also helps to offset our aged population with working-age adults.
In so many ways, a good school is ground zero for the health of our community. That’s why our neighbors in Klukwan have worked so hard to keep theirs open.
Here’s the last bit of math.
In our 60-member Alaska Legislature, there are only a few legislators who are keeping the majority of members from overriding Dunleavy’s vetoes of education funding. Call the National Education Association office in Juneau at 907-586-3090 and get the names of those few legislators.
Find out from NEA who is running against those legislators in this fall’s state election and donate money to them if they support a permanent increase to the BSA. Or just ask the NEA how you can help defeat legislators who won’t bend in favor of decent public schools.
Where hand-wringing and letter-writing don’t work, cash works wonders.