Back to school: Legislators head back to class for a day

WASILLA --When a bomb threat at Wasilla High School Monday forced the evacuation of the building, Sen. Scott Ogan was among the crowd of students and staff who headed out into the cold, across Bogard Road to Wasilla Middle School to wait out the threat.

Ogan had been visiting the school that day as part of a National Education Association-Alaska program, Alaska Legislators Back to School.

Linda Holler, the WHS history, government and humanities teacher whom Ogan shadowed for the day, said the program was designed to bring legislators into the classrooms to see what students and teachers experience on a daily basis. She said because of the evacuation, Sen. Ogan didn't get a chance to see much of what she had hoped he would during his visit. But, she conceded, teachers encounter all sorts of interruptions during the course of a typical school day.

"In that way, maybe it was good for him to see what we deal with," Holler said.

Ogan was one of 40 Alaska legislators who went "back to school" this week in honor of American Education Week.

"The best thing I can do as a legislator is to go hands on and see what's happening in the field," he said.

Virginia McKinney, NEA-Alaska's communications director, agrees. She said Alaska Legislators Back to School is an opportunity for legislators to get more than the "drive-by" visit and tour with a principal that they typically experience when they go into the schools.

And Ogan certainly got more than that. From a crowded, noisy lunchroom where he and a group of student leaders discussed shallow-bed drilling and the Legislature's effort to secure a natural-gas pipeline for Alaska, to the government class where he talked about caucuses and debated freedom of religion and wolf hunting, to his trek across the street during the school's evacuation, the senator was able to glean first-hand some of the challenges and successes teachers and students face each day.

"They were sharp. We got a rather lively debate going," said Ogan of the students he encountered.

And, he said, the teachers and administrators impressed him too.

"[The evacuation] was good for me to see. They had the procedure down. It gave me some reassurance that they've prepared for this sort of thing," Ogan said.

WHS Principal Dwight Probasco said he saw Ogan's visit as an opportunity for the senator to understand just what the job of teaching entails.

Though the school is one of the most overcrowded in the Valley, Probasco said he didn't set him up to be in the most crowded classrooms.

"It's just an opportunity to observe a high school, the biggest high school, and to see on any given day from Sept. 4 to June 2 just what's going on here," said Probasco.

McKinney said NEA-Alaska hopes Ogan and the other legislators will carry the images of their day in school back to Juneau with them.

"We hope the lawmakers' experience in schools will better prepare them for the important policy and budget decisions they'll face in Juneau come January," said NEA-Alaska President Rich Kronberg in an NEA-Alaska press release. "Adequate funding for our schools must be the top priority. Communities from Ketchikan to Kaktovik support our schools, and all Alaskans will be expecting their lawmakers to do the same."