Letters to the editor

Restore the Eklutna River

To the editor:

The Eklutna people have relied on the fish and wildlife supported by the Idluytnu (Eklutna River) since time immemorial. The river not only provides life-giving sustenance, but an important cultural connection to the people of the Dena’ina Village of Eklutna.

For the last 94 years, they have been unable to rely on the area for subsistence due to the Eklutna Hydroelectric Project’s damming. Despite the legal obligation to reconnect and restore the watershed, the project owners, Chugach Electric Association, Matanuska Electric Association, and the Municipality of Anchorage, have so far refused.

In a recent op-ed piece published in Anchorage Daily News, Aaron Leggett, the President of the Native Village of Eklutna Tribal Council, offered a compromise that entails simply removing the Eklutna Lake dam. This is a cost-effective alternative to the $57 million Draft Fish and Wildlife Plan that fails to address the dam’s harm to fish and wildlife.

The owners of the Eklutna Hydroelectric Project need to honor their legal and moral obligations and release a plan in line with the recommendations of fish and wildlife experts and the Native Village of Eklutna. Remove the dam!

Jasmine Redgrave,

Anchorage

New opportunities for Alaska, education

To the editor:

With the new year comes new opportunities. On January 17, the next session of the Alaska Legislature begins. This is the time to turn things around on public education.

With flat funding since 2016, school districts are hurting all over Alaska. Schools are being closed, staffing levels are lower than ever, and students are stuck in big classes without the resources they need. The good news is, we can end the crisis by overturning a veto and passing two bills already before the legislature.

This summer, Governor Dunleavy vetoed half of the legislature’s funding boost for education, cutting $87 million. The legislature can vote to add that back in the first five days of the new session. Also, SB 140 will raise the BSA (Base Student Allocation), and SB 88 will provide a better retirement system for public servants. Those three actions will allow districts to hire more teachers and give students the classrooms and programs they deserve.

How can you help? Email or call your legislators and tell them you support the veto override and the two bills. To find your legislators, type your address in the “Who Represents Me” box at https://akleg.gov/index.php.

Cheryl Lovegreen

Anchorage

Schools not a priority, according to state budget

To the editor:

In a Frontiersman article last month, the governor said his operations budget proposal would make classroom investment a priority. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People values classroom instruction, so we looked at where education actually stood on the governor’s budget sheet.

We found that the governor aims to reduce the state education department’s budget by some $120 million next year compared to this year. For perspective, that’s enough to pay about 1,200 teachers.

His budget sheet also shows that since Mr. Dunleavy became governor, the biggest operations dollar reductions among all of the state’s nineteen departments have come out of K-12 education. For example, this school year the governor allowed only one-third of the funds necessary to carry out the reading interventions that he’d mandated in the Alaska Reads Act. In the Mat Su alone, almost 3,000 K-3 students appear to be entitled to extra reading help under the Reads Act this school year. However, under the governor’s veto the borough’s schools lost $7.5 million to carry out that kind of classroom instruction.

The governor’s budget indeed shows his priorities. But schools rank last.

̶Mike Bronson,

NAACP education committee member, Anchorage