Students from across the peninsula are working to make sure their voices are heard by lawmakers.
On the central peninsula, local parent groups are helping students voice their concerns through letter writing. On Wednesday, March 20, parents and students from River City Academy organized a postcard-writing event open to the public.
River City Academy 10th-grader Kaegan Koski said he wrote six postcards to his legislators.
“The recently proposed budget cuts — they are looking a little grim from a lot of people’s points of view,” Koski said. “We just want to talk about all the things that we don’t want to be cut as a result of this budget. It’s just a way to make it easier for the public to get their views to the legislators and to advocate for full funding.”
The parent group initiative had the postcards pre-stamped and pre-addressed for all the legislators representing the Kenai Peninsula to make the process as simple as possible.
Koski said the group encouraged postcard writers to remain positive and to highlight what they love about their schools.
Keeping the pupil-to-teacher ratio low is one concern Koski wrote about to his legislators.
“I think that a 25 percent cut of a budget is still incredibly intense,” Koski said. “I don’t think to reach a midway point is something we could even reach … Education is something we cut first. It’s something that we need and it’s pretty terrible that we have to question that right now.”
Carla King, a River City Academy parent, was writing several letters at the event. She said her choice to move to Alaska was greatly dependent on the education system.
“Yeah, I could go to Mississippi and pay lower taxes, but I don’t want to go to a place where they have no future,” King said. “The administration is basically making the decision to make life easier for the oil companies at a cost to kids … I don’t know what Dunleavy’s thinking. This is not the way to run a state if you expect it to remain a state into the future.”
Koski’s mother, Eva Knutson, helped host the letter-writing event. Postcards were made available to other schools in the district as well. She said more than 600 postcards have already been completed.
Two peninsula students associated with Alaska Youth for Environmental Action visited Juneau earlier this month to talk with lawmakers about legislation they were passionate about.
Eva Downing is from Sterling and attends Soldotna High School and has been involved with Alaska Youth for Environmental Action for two years. She said she went to Juneau to advocate for education as well as legislation looking to increase energy efficiency and include clean energy resources on public, state-funded buildings.
With her dad working at the Kenai Peninsula College, her brother attending the University of Alaska Anchorage and her own school district in Soldotna, Downing said she’s concerned about the depth of Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s proposed budget cuts.
“It doesn’t seem to me that it would lead to a sustainable state,” Downing said of the budget cuts. “The state is putting oil and other issues above students and above the future of our state.”
Downing said she met with many lawmakers who gave positive feedback, and many told her they didn’t think the proposed budget would pass.
It was Homer High School student Summer McGuire’s first time visiting the state Capitol when she traveled with Alaska Youth for Environmental Action earlier this month. She also went to Juneau to speak about legislation that promotes energy efficiency in public buildings.
She said the advocacy group prepared her to speak with state leaders. McGuire said she worked hard to channel her passion about the issues she was discussing, while also focusing on how she could best communicate to legislators.
“I had to be my clearest in what I was speaking about so I could be respected as a constituent and they could understand,” McGuire said.
The opportunity to visit the Capitol and speak with lawmakers was thrilling, McGuire said.
“It was so empowering,” she said. “Now I have the confidence to talk about what I’m passionate about. I think we can all take it upon ourselves to create a better world.”
River City Academy student Molly Koski helps host a postcard-writing event that encourages students and community members to reach out to their local lawmakers in regards to Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s recently proposed budget cuts, on Wednesday, March 20, 2019, at the Soldotna Public Library in Soldotna, Alaska. (Photo by Victoria Petersen/Peninsula Clarion)
