World News Korner

Anchorage school board candidate knows exactly what is wrong with our schools. Too many non-white students.

Courtesy of ADN:

An Anchorage school board candidate says some of the problems at the cash-strapped Anchorage School District have been caused by a shift in the ethnic background of its students.

In an interview with Alaska Public Media broadcast and posted online this week, Don Smith, 75, compared the ethnic makeup of students in the district today to what he remembered from when he was in school.

"When I was in Anchorage High School, it was about 98 percent white students, and the balance were probably Native, and one or two black students," he told reporter Daysha Eaton. "Today, we're 48 percent white, 52 percent other, and that clearly is causing problems. I think our numbers are dropping because we're importing all these people that aren't up to the standards that we had set for the school."

Smith goes on to specifically blame the problem on what he sees as an influx of students from Africa and Indonesia.

For one thing he is right that when he went to school the population in Anchorage was almost exclusively Caucasian. They were also among the wealthiest of Alaska's residents, which is why they lived in Anchorage and had access to the best schools.

Schools in other parts of the state were not doing nearly as well, and in some rural communities the education was haphazard at best. That was not a problem with ethnicity, that was a problem with funding and access to well trained teachers.

Of course this was back before the Republicans launched their war on public education and started to strip away funding and undermine teachers. Don Smith is a Republican.

When I was a student in in the sixties and seventies Anchorage schools were among the best in the nation. That was not because they were filled with white faces, though in many parts of the city that was true, it was because teachers were respected, and supported by our local politicians.

The problem is not with the diversity among the Anchorage student body it is with the politicians who constantly attack public education and work to underfund our public schools.

And that is a problem perpetrated by the likes of Don Smith and other members of the Alaska Republican Party.

Only a racist unfit to sit on an Anchorage School Board would think to blame the result of their dirty work on the children of immigrants.

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