The Anchorage School District is asking for public input of how to improve our education programs. The first thing that should be done is to quit mainstreaming these problem kids into the regular classrooms. This cheats the good students, who want to learn, out of valuable time as the teacher must expend an inordinate amount of their time on these kids, thus cheating the majority out of important educational time. These kids should be in a classroom with like students and able to earn their way back into the regular classrooms only when their behavior changes.
The second thing is to offer a defined-benefit retirement program for the teachers to help with teacher retention. We are the only state in the union not offering this to its teachers.
Thirdly, we need more parent involvement with these problem kids, not criticism from them, in many cases, blaming the schools for their behavior. We are seeing a number of teachers leaving because of these problems.
— Greg Svendsen
Anchorage
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