Editorial: You're never too old to step up to the plate

July 29, 2007

Frontiersman Editorial

With July winding down, Mat-Su Valley parents and children are beginning to look forward past another wonderful Alaska summer to the new school year.

New clothes, school supplies, backpacks and lunchboxes create excitement, along with the prospect of renewing friendships. For our northern neighbors in the Talkeetna area, their concerns are a bit more weighty. Along with making sure students are properly outfitted for a new school year, the community is also working fervently to make sure those students have a place to learn.

Since fire ripped through the Su Valley Jr./Sr. High School June 5, school officials and the Talkeetna community have been under a heavy deadline - one that grows more dense each day - to prepare a temporary campus for the school's scheduled Aug. 20 opening.

While the school board and Mat-Su Borough dicker with insurance over plans to rebuild the school, the immediate concern about where students could learn while their new school is constructed was solved quickly.

If its children can be considered a community's greatest resource, its elders run a close second. We applaud the Upper Susitna Valley Senior Center for stepping up to the plate again, offering its building and grounds. While the school district will make improvements and additions the seniors will enjoy after the new Su Valley school is built, being uprooted from their facility for two years is a commendable sacrifice. The senior lunch program, one of the mainstays of many senior centers, is on hold, along with other programs.

We're proud of our Mat-Su Valley seniors and hope the students today who will attend classes in one of the many portable buildings being set up at the senior center will not be ignorant to the example these seniors are setting. These selfless seniors have already raised their families. It would be easy to adopt a &#8220hey, I already raised mine; you raise yours” attitude, but they don't and won't.

As devastating as it is to lose a community's only junior/senior high school (which also serves as a gathering place, emergency shelter and community center), Talkeetna and the Upper Susitna Valley can be proud of how it has rallied for its youth. We thank the senior center and its members.

Come Aug. 20, Su Valley students will be back in class, learning like always, and showing off their new clothes, school supplies and backpacks.