Mat-Su is ‘1 in a million,’ congrats CTHS

We invest a huge chunk of our tax dollars in public education, and for that investment we expect top caliber students, teachers and facilities.

Well, you asked for it, and you got it.

On the athletic field, there is no equivalent. Maybe if the same athletes won state in football, basketball, track, volleyball, wrestling and hockey it would compare. But it would still be apples and oranges.

We are talking about an academically elite group of scholars who won not one, or two, but three state-level contests. It’s a feat that’s been matched by about 10 other schools in the history of the contests.

It’s not just that students from Mat-Su Career and Technical School won the Science Olympiad this weekend for the fourth time. It’s also that students at Career Tech teams won 16 of 23 events. Of the 10 teams in the state contest, four were comprised of students from Career Tech.

In many contests, we swept the top two or three places. It’s not just one or two kids, or even just kids from Career Tech. Our kids set the bar for science and math contests in Alaska.

If you want a blue ribbon, or a red ribbon, then you need to study harder than our kids, starting in middle school.

We own the top spots for Science Olympiad in the middle school competition, thanks to Teeland Middle School’s winning ways. Teeland students have logged a streak of more than 10 first place finishes, not bad for a school that only opened in 2001.

When Career Tech and Teeland notched wins again this weekend, students did more than repeat as state Science Olympiad champs for another year.

Students at Career Tech also notched another milestone, a triple crown of academic excellence.

This year the team not only won top honors in Alaska in the Science Olympiad competition, they also won the opportunity to represent Alaska in the National Ocean Sciences Bowl and National Science Bowl.

A big chunk of credit for this success is due to Career and Tech science teacher Tim Lundt — who coaches the local teams for the National Science Bowl, Ocean Sciences Bowl and Science Olympiad competitions. He said winning all three regional competitions is a first for the school, but it’s even more rare to notch such a trifecta of wins.

“It’s really only been done three or four times in the country,” Lundt said. “If you look at how many high school kids participate in each three, and then the odds of going to nationals in all three, it’s like one in a million.”

Career Tech opened in 2007.

Lundt is the force behind the Mat-Su Borough School District’s articulated wildlife skeletons that classes around the state check out and use in their studies. Last we heard, there was a waiting list to get into Lundt’s science classes, which alone seems pretty amazing.

But these students did all of this while we changed graduation requirements, squabbled about how to measure teacher success, and while we scrapped the whole high school qualifying exam requirement that their peers faced.

That is to say, these kids brought home the gold while we quibbled amongst ourselves about whether they were worthy of our investments.

While we look for ways to balance the state budget, deep cuts to education spending are proposed. Education is different than other line items in the budget because it is not purely a cost. We urge the Mat-Su Legislative Delegation to treat education as a priceless investment in building Alaska’s human capital.

Congratulations to all our students who participated in these rigorous academic contests. Your success is proof our investment has already begun to pay dividends.