WANTED; LEADERS - Ketchikan is at a crossroads. Our borough government, with existing revenues, can no longer pay for the services the community is accustomed to. That doesn't necessarily mean that the services are valueless and should be discarded. - Read more...
Monday - May 03, 2004

TIME FOR A TURNAROUND; GIVE EDUCATION THE SUPPORT IT DESERVES - University of Alaska President Mark Hamilton, in town recently, colorfully likened the effect of nine years of budget cuts the University endured to a Tidybowl commercial. In the five years since he assumed his post, the legislature has reversed course and put money into the University system. The increased funding has now created an upward spiral. This year for the first time, he reported, over fifty percent of Alaska's youth who go on to college will attend the University of Alaska, up from forty percent just four years ago. - Read more...
Thursday - April 29, 2004

Ketchikan's Brain Drain - Fewer youth return to Ketchikan after leaving home to pursue jobs or post secondary education than to any other borough or municipality in Alaska. This is according to research done by economist Jeff Hadland published in the January issue of Alaska Economic Trends. - Read more...
Monday - February 16, 2004 - 12:50 am

All Christmas Trees are Beautiful - I picked out the tree alone this year, Elaine was at work and our daughters too involved in teen things. I placed it in its' stand in the corner of our living room, enjoying the fresh pine scent that filled the warm room. The branches sprang open as I cut away the twine that had held them in a tightly wound cocoon, and I stepped back and admired this beautiful tree that had been grown and shaped just for us to enjoy this Christmas season, and to live in our Christmas memories for the rest of our lives. - Read more...
Monday - December 22, 2003 - 1:15 am

LEARNING FROM VIET NAM - Late at night before I go to bed, I check the internet news for the latest word on American casualties in Iraq. It is in a sense a morbid habit, but like the moth examining the flame I am struggling to understand our dangerous engagement in Iraq and the future of the generation of young Americans we have asked to carry the burden. - Read more...
Thursday - November 13, 2003 - 12:50 am

HUGO GOT HIS FREEDOM - No black people lived in our little town in southwestern Wisconsin when I was a boy. No black family farmed any of the tidy dairy farms that were the mainstay of the area economy. When we were kids and traveled to Madison with Mom on the Greyhound bus we saw "Negroes": the Red Cap who handled our bags at the depot, and the janitor. We saw pictures of black people in Life magazine, but we mostly knew about blacks through books like Little Black Sambo , or Uncle Remus , and songs like "Old Black Joe." Somehow we learned that radio characters Amos and Andy were black, even though we had never seen a black person or heard one talk. - Read more...
Saturday - October 18, 2003 - 12:30 am

The Root of the Problem - During each of the past two years, the Borough Assembly has balanced the borough budget by taking money from the school district. Last year, learning that the district was scheduled to receive a Learning Opportunity grant from the state for $500,000, the Assembly cut an equal amount from the school board's request. This year, the Assembly not only cut $500,000 from the school district's operating budget request, but cut $100,000 for student extracurricular activities. - Read more...
Wednesday - August 27, 2003 - 12:30 am

THERE WILL BE SCHOOL THIS FALL - The "education" assembly notwithstanding, school will open this fall and there is good news for students and parents at every level. Parents of elementary age children will have many choices, all of them good. The regular district curriculum will be offered at White Cliff, Houghtaling and Point Higgins. Ketchikan Charter School, beginning it's seventh year, will offer the core knowledge curriculum to grades kindergarten through seven. The new Tongass School of the Arts and Sciences will open it's doors for the first time, offering a curriculum based on thematic instruction. Both charter schools will operate at the Valley Park Campus. - Click here to read more...
Monday - July 22, 2003 - 9:45 pm

A MATTER OF PRIORITIES - At the height of the Viet Nam war, 1968 to 1970, I lived and worked for the U.S. government in a series of small towns in rural South Viet Nam. Each morning, and each afternoon, the sides of the roads were clogged by Vietnamese children trudging to and from school. The boys wore blue shorts, white shirts and plastic sun helmets. The girls wore white dresses and white bonnets. Each carried a plastic book bag that, given the small size of the child, assumed the proportions of a suitcase. - Click here to read more...
Saturday - June 07, 2003 - 12:50 pm

STEPPING UP TO THE PLATE - First it was the Education President. After enacting the No Child Left Behind Act with much ballyhoo, Mr. Bush asked the congress for only three billion of the estimated sixteen billion dollars needed to fund it. Then it was the Education Governor. After promising in last fall's election campaign to fully fund K-12 education Governor Murkowski sent a budget to the legislature cutting Learning Opportunity grants by a third and reducing pupil transportation twenty percent, cuts which would have cost Ketchikan schools $435,000. Responding to public concerns, the legislature appears ready to restore most of those cuts, but unfortunately at the expense of the university system. Now it is our turn at bat, down here at the local level where children are educated, taxes are paid, and there is nowhere else to pass the buck. - Click here to read more...
Saturday - May 10, 2003 - 12:30 am

Sifting Through the Chaff - If the governor cuts $20 million from school busing and $10 million from grants, if the school district absorbs $541,000 in pay increases, hires three new maintenance employees and buys two new trucks, pays four teachers out of the operating fund instead of grants, doesn't buy social studies curriculum materials next year, but gives Houghtaling one new fourth grade class, if there are no year-end savings salvaged from this years expenditures to carryover into next year, the two charter schools cost us over six hundred thousand dollars each, and student enrollment drops by twenty-five students, even if the borough gives the district $350,000 more than last year the school district will have a $1.7 million deficit. Got that? - Read more...
Monday - March 31, 2003 - 8:50 pm

Promises To Keep - It started at the top; the Education President, George W. Bush, promised fourteen billion extra federal dollars for education last year as he signed the No Child Left Behind Act. Months later, when he sent his budget to congress, he asked for only $3.1 billion. That left state governor's gasping, including Governor Murkowski who traveled to Washington seeking accommodations for some of the act's more expensive requirements, particularly the need to place qualified teachers in every rural school. - Read more...
Saturday - March 08, 2003 - 12:55 pm

Keeping Kids In School - WHILE WE WERE BLOWING THROUGH OUR TWENTY-FIVE MILLION DOLLAR DISASTER FUND, A FUNNY THING WAS HAPPENING TO OUR CHILDREN -- While I was eating at a local restaurant the other evening, the owner paused at my table to comment on some remarks I had made earlier in the day on the radio about our student dropout rate. "It's really sad," he lamented, "that Ketchikan has so little opportunity to offer young people after high school." - Read more...
Monday - February 17, 2003 - 4:40 pm

Repeating the Mistakes of History - The picture on the Daily News, (01/29/03) showing a Coast Guard spouse exchanging words with a man holding a sign saying "No Rush to War" in front of Ketchikan's Federal Building brings back vivid memories. - Read more...
Friday - January 31, 2003 - 1:55 pm

No Room At The Inn - The hundred or so people who gathered at the Civic Center last Wednesday night to hear about and discuss plans for the Schoenbar Middle School renovation slated to begin next summer were a dutiful group. It was gratifiying to see so many people wanting to be part of the process. They included parents, teachers, school board members and students. But the most concerned were the parents who had students about to enter Schoenbar, parents of this year's sixth graders. Their message was loud and clear; we and our children want a middle school program, not just a one year extension of their elementary education. - Read more...
Monday - January 13, 2003 - 12:30 am

It Takes A Whole Village - I went to the Chamber of Commerce's Education and Workforce Development Committee meeting a couple weeks ago to see what was up. What was up was a new program the committee wants implemented by Ketchikan High School called, "School Counts!" - Read more...
Saturday - December 21, 2002 - 11:45 pm

What I Want For Christmas - The City Council wants to know what projects you want to see pursued in the next few years. According to the weekend edition of the Daily News, the Council will hold public hearings at the Council Chambers at 7:00 pm, Tuesday and Wednesday, December 3rd. and 4th. to take public testimony. I may, or may not, attend, but in case I don't, here is my list. - Read more...
Monday - December 02, 2992 - 7:05 pm

Onward To The School Board...
Saturday - November 23, 2002 - 9:15 am 

The Battle of Oxford...
Thursday - November 14, 2002 - 12:30 am

Big Brothers Big Sisters...
Wednesday - November 06, 2002 - 11:40 pm

 College Costs...
Wednesday - October 30, 2002 - 7:30 pm

harpold@sitnews.org