Excited for return of schools page

We are eagerly awaiting the return of our Schools page Tuesday and think you should be, too.

There was a time when Schools was an obligation for us; yet another feature page requiring photos and stories from a news staff that already had a lot of work to do.

But a few years back we decided to change that, to go back to what it once was — an outlet for talented Mat-Su students. We are not subject-matter experts on what is going on in our schools, we reasoned. But the Mat-Su student body includes 17,800 such experts.

We met a couple dozen of them on Friday. Our Assistant Managing Editor Andrew Wellner spent all day on a field trip with Colony High School, Wasilla High School and Houston High School students.

Along with a reporter from the Alaska Dispatch News, Zaz Hollander, we interviewed James Wanser, the principal of Valley Pathways High School.

The plan was to move on to Mat-Su Career And Technical High School to do another interview but this time hand the reigns over to these aspiring high school writers.

That was the plan, anyway, but the kids took over ahead of schedule. The first question Wellner asked Wanser was actually one the kids had suggested earlier in the day. When he and Hollander paused in the interview, the kids jumped in and ended up handling pretty much the rest of the conversation. They had questions that neither Wellner nor Hollander thought to ask. Questions about dress code and the security system of the building.

At Career Tech they ran the interview as planned but they also grabbed people to talk to who weren’t on the program. One of the people interviewed, Allie Poe, is a student journalist who will contribute to the Schools page. In fact, she’s already handed in her first story. And it’s pretty good.

Back at Colony, the kids put together leads for stories that went off in all sorts of different directions. Where Wellner saw just two stories — a new building for Pathways and a new addition for Career Tech — the kids saw 20.

They came up with lead paragraphs for stories about school funding, about the culture of big schools versus small schools, about arts education and about the academic achievements of Pathways and Career Tech students.

We were impressed, is what we’re saying. These kids have a genuine curiosity about their school district and curiosity is really the main prerequisite for producing quality journalism. We expect we will see great things from them over the course of this school year.

They’ll be filling our features page every Tuesday. They also have plans for a website combining journalism from a variety of schools — Mat-Su Central and possibly other schools will join in alongside Wasilla, Houston, Colony and Career Tech — and even an insert for the Frontiersman. We will get you details of where to find those things as plans are shored up.

A majority of our newsroom got its start in some form of student journalism. Wellner started out as a schools page reporter for the Alaska Dispatch News’ predecessor, the Anchorage Daily News. Sports Editor Jeremiah Bartz cut his teeth on a previous incarnation of the Frontiersman’s schools page. Reporter Brian O’Connor wrote for his high school newspaper.

So, if past is any prologue these Schools pages will not be the last place we see these kids’ bylines. It’s going to be a fun year. We hope you’ll follow along.