The approaching school year brings new list of hopes to Valley

Frontiersman editorial board

Remember when back to school meant shopping for clothes in the Sears and Penney's catalogues, and stocking up on pencils, erasers, notebooks and backpacks?

Remember the excitement of choosing your one or two elective courses and the terror and exhilaration of discovering who your teachers would be?

That's what the beginning of a new school year used to mean to most of us, and hopefully it still feels that way for our children.

For those of us who now pay taxes, vote for school board members and who view education from the outside, the first day of school brings a whole new set of hopes and dreads.

If we have children in school, we hope they'll have good teachers, and we'll hope our kids don't get mixed up with the wrong crowd.

We'll hope they don't suffer their first heartbreak this year -- all the usual things. We have other hopes these days, though.

We hope there won't be any messy contract negotiations this year, so teachers can stay focused on their important work in the classroom, and administrators can stay focused on the task of trying to run the district efficiently, and board members can get about the business of pressuring the legislature to finally fund education as the priority Alaskans say it is.

We hope the lawsuit recently filed by the National Education Association of Alaska against the state won't deflect attention away from the critical challenges facing the state's school districts.

We hope our administration and our teachers remain focused on the real education of each child and are not tempted to alter curriculum and teaching styles in order to improve Annual Yearly Progress test scores.

So far, the district and teachers seem to have a realistic and positive approach to that quandary, but pressure from parents who place too much credence in the flawed test criteria could create an unhealthy environment for improvement in our schools.

We hope our legislative team will listen to Valley voters and make education a top priority in the next legislative session.

We hope the bad blood that was stirred up between teachers and the administration will be replaced by a spirit of cooperation for the people both groups serve -- the students.

We hope this is a good school year, when the community can celebrate accomplishment and learning, and a year that makes this community proud.