Common Core
Dear Editor: My name is Tim Fulton and I currently serve on the Sitka School Board. I want to clarify some misconceptions some of our community members seem to have regarding who is responsible for adopting Common Core State Standards in Sitka Schools and other decisions that have been or are being made.
I resent the implication that I am not doing my sworn duty and that our superintendent is making all the decisions.
The school superintendent, Dr. Mary Wegner, is under the direction of your elected Sitka School Board. If the public has objections regarding the adoption of Common Core State Standards, those objections should be directed at the School Board, not at Dr. Wegner.
Further, as a board we have committed to continued implementation of technology to benefit our students. Dr. Wegner’s understanding and passion for technology was one of the reasons she was hired as our Superintendent. Again, Dr. Wegner is following the direction of the School Board with respect to technology.
We are facing some difficult decisions and your School Board is working diligently to listen to everyone’s concerns and make decisions that are best for all our children, not only for today, but for tomorrow. Regarding these decisions, the superintendent is following the direction of the school board, the mandates of the state and the responsibilities of her position.
Dr. Wegner has my full confidence and support. In my opinion, her passion and dedication for doing what is right for our students makes for a bright future for our children and us very lucky to have her as our superintendent.
Tim J. Fulton, Sitka
National Library Week
Dear Editors: National Library Week will be celebrated across the nation from April 12 through April 18. This Library Week is unlike most for Kettleson. Our expanded regular building takes shape more and more every day; we are in a lovely temporary home at the Stratton Library; and we are in the process of joining the Joint Library Consortium, an arrangement with other libraries across the state to share their collections among one another. Our print collection is evolving. Our electronic services are growing. The library you’re used to may look a little different than before, and the way we do things may change a little. What hasn’t changed, however, is that Sitka has a library worth celebrating, because we remain dedicated to this community.
Since taking over as library director in October, I have been continually impressed by the hard work, creativity, talent, and service exhibited by the current library staff, our former employees, library pages, volunteers, Friends of the Library organization, and Library Commission. All have worked together to build an institution greater than that which can be contained within four walls. It is a living thing that contributes to the collective heart, mind and soul of Sitka.
Whether you come in person every day, only use our resources over the internet, or enjoy our services vicariously through the organizations we partner with – we want to be the best library possible for everyone here. National Library Week is once a year. We celebrate Local Library Patron Week 52 times because of your support.
On a final note, one special part of National Library Week will be National Library Worker Day on Tuesday, April 14. The library workers here are a phenomenal group. If you visit, call, or e-mail the library on that or any day, please join me in thanking them and wishing them well. If you have any questions, comments, critiques, or compliments, for Kettleson Memorial Library please feel free to contact me. Best regards.
Robb Farmer, Director,
Kettleson Memorial Library
Vaccination Talk
Dear Editor: Wednesday night I attended my first “Doc Talk,” by pediatrician Dr. David Vastola, about childhood vaccinations. Few topics are as socially divisive as vaccinations. I appreciated Dr. Vastola’s thorough preparedness, and I learned a lot. He explained well what he (and the American Medical Association and World Health Organization) views as an essential part of keeping not just one’s own children, but the whole world, safe.
However, there is one area in which I wish to quibble with Dr. Vastola, and that is in his explanation about why it is that the largest demographic (in the U.S.) currently refusing to vaccinate their children are educated, upper-middle class people. My memory is that he attributed this reality to that fact that that demographic is the portion of America that reads the most, and there is a huge amount of anti-vaccine literature available. The implication seemed to be that, although they read, they are not discriminating readers, and aren’t able to parse fact from snake oil.
As an educated, upper-middle class, white woman of child-bearing age (I don’t have children), I’d like to offer an alternate explanation. “Educated” means that most people in the demographic under discussion have gone to college, and many have attended graduate school. In college, particularly in the arts, humanities and social sciences, one encounters implicit and explicit critiques of authority and the kind of hierarchical power structures that American medicine has historically enjoyed being at the top of. Every discipline from history to sociology to journalism is rife with stories of authority figures using their power for harm, or simply not knowing what the heck they were talking about (and so inadvertently causing harm). All of those disciplines, and a whole host of others, devote years worth of classes to deconstructing and criticizing the kind of authoritative, top-down worldview in which “experts” disseminate commands to the passive masses. And yet, that authoritative worldview is still the dominant one in the medical community. (Though I do not accuse Dr. Vastola or any other specific doctor of advancing that worldview.)
I think what we have is a deeper problem than what Dr. Vastola seemed to imply last night – that people don’t vaccinate their children because they read things, but don’t read critically. No doubt non-critical engagement with all kinds of media is a gigantic problem in America, and educated upper-middle class folks aren’t immune from sloppy thinking. But in the specific case of educated, upper-middle class people refusing to vaccinate their children, I believe there is a worldview clash taking place, in which one group of people are demanding the masses submit to the authority of science, statistics, and a medical worldview, and another group of people are resisting being (as they think of it) hornswaggled by the authorities (and hasn’t history given us limitless reasons to distrust authorities of every kind?). The situation isn’t helped, of course, when anti-vaccinators try to talk to doctors and are met with either derision or a gentle condescension, which only confirms their suspicions that doctors are operating within an antiquated and wrong-headed worldview. (Obviously these are generalizations; no doubt many doctors defy the norm, and quite plausibly Dr. Vastola is among them).
My point is this: until the American Medical Association and its members take seriously legitimate critiques of the power it has long enjoyed and assumed – until we can have a conversation about that – the vaccination conversation (a crucial conversation!) isn’t going to find its feet.
Thanks to Dr. Vastola, and to everyone who makes the “Doc Talks” possible.
Tamie Parker Song, Sitka
Affordable Housing
Dear Editor: Housing that regular Sitkans can actually afford is a huge problem. Thanks to recent action by Railbelt legislators, education funding is in crisis across Alaska, including the Sitka School District, which is staring down a rabid $3.3 million budget deficit.
These two problems may seem wildly unrelated. But there may be a solution that partially addresses both.
Sitka has limited building space. That’s part of the reason why housing costs so much: there’s limited new land, and all of it costs an arm and a leg. (Zoning regulations are also restrictive, and disincentivize efficient economic development, but that’s another story.)
Contributing to the problem is that more lots and houses are being bought by seasonal residents. People from the Lower 48 with disposable income enjoy fishing for kings, or Sitka’s high quality of life, or how insanely beautiful it is here, and they come up and buy a house. They’re here for a few months of the year, and leave during the winters back to the places they came from.
Sitka majorly loses out this way. When seasonal residents buy up homes, they restrict the already low supply of houses, and deflate the supply-demand rate of the housing market. Housing gets even more scarce and expensive for young people, middle class people, and (really) anyone who wants to make a life in Sitka year-round.
This is a trend we should be concerned about. Sitka needs to guard against being a perfect little community that is populated with wealthy seasonal residents’ second homes, and where people with slimmer means and less money can no longer make a living or a life. We do not want to be the Nantucket of the Pacific Northwest.
There are options to prevent this, options that towns similar to Sitka have already explored. One is a two-tier tax on property.
It’s a pretty intuitive idea: for people who live here year round, you pay normal property tax (6.5 mills). For people who don’t live here year round (e.g., people who don’t qualify for a PFD), you pay a higher property tax (10 mills, for example).
This disincentivizes people buying up second homes, or buying up land or homes in Sitka merely as an investment, which reduces the competition (and price) for people looking to buy homes who live here year round. It would also help raise money for the City, which the City could certainly use. Ideally, a good chunk of the revenue could be dedicated to the school district – which we can all agree really needs the help: the idea of pink-slipping ten-plus teachers is not appealing.
Two-tiered taxes would be good for working families, and good for young Sitkans trying to break into the housing market. They’d be good for the city and good for the school district. It’s a classic win-win idea.
Berett Wilber, Sitka
Education Cuts
Dear Editor: I will make only two points of the many possible, regarding the education cuts.
First, the state’s only Constitutionally-mandated role as managers of our affairs is to fund education. For certain when written, this mandate was not intended to provide a gutted, bare bones, emaciated system. Not a schooling, I would point out, that the progenitors of these cuts enjoyed.
Second, we live in a state that agreed to pay the oil companies millions of dollars if their profits dropped below a certain point, companies already granted the privilege of extracting and selling our oil. Meanwhile, the brunt of the deficit we face in our state finances is being passed along to the easiest targets, the most vulnerable Alaskans.
We have, and have always been, proud of calling Alaska home. But there is no escaping it – these cuts to the education of our children are nothing short of shameful.
Stephen Lawrie, Susan Padilla, Sitka
