Issues facing the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District were discussed during KSRM’s coverage of Decision 2023 focused on the Board of Education District 3 (Nikiski) race.
The Tuesday evening radio forum featured candidates competing in the race to fill a three-year term seat. Sitting Board of Education member, Jason Tauriainen, and challenger Lyndsey Bertoldo spoke on issues impacting the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District in advance of the General Election on Tuesday, October 3rd.
The subjects discussed included the Mat-Su Borough School District’s choice to remove books from its libraries, the scrutiny surrounding the reconstruction proposal for Soldotna Elementary, and state education funding.
The candidates also discussed the Alaska READS Act, specifically complaints over the amount of additional work it is placing on teachers.
Tauriainen;
“I believe our teachers are overworked. Sometimes they have a lot on their plate. A lot of our teachers put in extra time. [That’s] one of the [reasons] why I advocated for maybe a change to the school week, if that’s something that the community wants to do, to give them more time to work on another day. Most elementary school teachers work on the weekends as well. Trying to get grading done, and also finding time to train. So, anytime we roll a new curriculum out, it’s always difficult. It’s always a challenge. It’s something that the districts are aware of, something we’re aware of on the board, [we] try to add extra time for them to be able to do training. We provide training, but I do think we can do more. And so, I’d like to see us do more of that. But part of that’s going to come with funding because we just can’t afford to add extra training days if we’re not adequately funded to be able to do that. And so, we gotta be. As creative as we can to do it within the constraints we have.”
Bertoldo;
“I think that it’s maybe less of the Alaska READS Act that’s doing that, and more of the curriculum. I think Three by Nine and by third grade seems like a bar actually too low. You know what happened to reading in first grade? I wouldn’t be worried about reading by Nine and 3rd grade. I’d wanna do it before then and get them up to speed by then so that they’re proficient in it. As far as the curriculum, I think that that’s the problem. I think that teachers just do not want to teach it because of the content, but also because they didn’t have the time to really get it down themselves before having to introduce it to the students. And there’s just too much content and too little time for them to cover it all.”
In case you missed it, click the player below to listen to the entire Tauriainen, Bertoldo candidate election forum:
