By ANCHORAGE DAILY PLANET
Among the tin ears that abound in this city’s political circles, it turns out we also may have a problem with myopic public executives.
Take, for instance, the Anchorage School District’s decision to hire a high-power, Seattle-headquartered public relations outfit to handle the fallout from the messy controversy surrounding an incident at Dimond High.
The firm, Strategies 360, touts itself as “a full-service research, public affairs, and communications firm, bringing deep expertise, providing a full range of services, and promising sharp strategic thinking that gets results.” The firm is well known in local circles. Mayor Ethan Berkowitz, as late as 2014, was a vice president.
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Let’s start thinking about a referendum to replace (yes, replace) Anchorage’s education industry.
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We know about American and foreign education organizations who are recognized for providing top-quality, classical education.
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We know these organizations don’t cost as much as Anchorage School District (but if they did, wouldn’t the result be worth the investment?).
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What do you think of a referendum, a City Charter change if necessary, demanding the Assembly contract out ASD management, supervision, and administrative functions, including teaching, to an outside, top-quality education organization?
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We know what our ASD-union-School Board-lobbyist-consultant partnership will say to that idea, but they seem irrelevant now, a noisy overfunded cabal dedicated to self interest instead of children’s education..
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We have an expensive, growing problem to solve. Our ASD-union-School Board-lobbyist-consultant partnership is unqualified to be part of that solution.
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What does that mean? We gave that partnership time and money to create a world-class education system. What we got was a monstrous, metastatic education industry that does a spectacularly bad job of educating children, but does a really good job of getting (and spending) taxpayers’ money, with no accountability to anybody.
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So it’s up to us fix our education industry.
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We can do this. Our children deserve no less.
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Your thoughts, Gentle Readers?
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