Education

Ten-year-old Aaron Blust of Juneau is an inspired chef.  His salmon dish is getting him and his family a trip to Washington, D.C.

Blust is one of the winners of the national Healthy Lunchtime Challenge. The contest was organized by Epicurious.com, the United States Department of Education, the United States Department of Agriculture and Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” health initiative.

Parents of children between the ages of 8 and 12 were encouraged to send in their kids’ original recipes for a nutritious, delicious lunch. A winner was selected from each state, as well as from the District of Columbia and several U.S. territories.

Blust will represent Alaska at the Kids State Dinner, which the first lady will host at the White House early next week.

Alaskans consider Social Security a family protection plan, according to AARP.

More and more of the federal benefits are going to children, surviving spouses and disabled workers under the age of 65. AARP research indicates that 36 percent of Social Security beneficiaries in Alaska fit those categories.

Alaskans last year received more than $1 billion in Social Security benefits. AARP hopes those beneficiaries and other Alaskans will join the national debate on Social Security and Medicare.

The organization just kicked off its nationwide “Earned a Say” campaign. It’s asking the public to weigh in on the two programs that seem to have become political footballs in Washington, especially during an election year.

AARP Alaska Media Director Ann Secrest said “Earned a Say” is appropriately named.

“Americans earned a right to have a say about the future of Medicare and Social Security. They’ve paid into these programs throughout their working lives and we feel very strongly that if decisions are being made about these two important programs behind closed doors, then that has to come out from behind closed doors and Americans have a right to have a say about Medicare and Social Security,” Secrest said

The senior citizens’ interest and advocacy group has published various solutions for Social Security and Medicare at Earned A Say website. AARP sought experts, not politicians, to frame the pros and cons of each option.

“There’s no spin, there’s no partisanship. The experts we engaged put it out there on the website for everyone to evaluate for themselves,” Secrest said. “The reason that we did this is we want people to read about the options and then compare it to the candidates who are running for office. Where do they stand? We want people to understand where the candidates stand before they vote this November.”

Ninety percent of Alaskans over the age of 65 received Social Security in 2011, but the total individual annual benefit averaged only $13,500. For low and middle-income Alaskans, the monthly checks accounted for more than half their earnings.

Alaska seniors also rely on Medicare. Nearly 95 percent of those over the age of 65 were enrolled in Medicare in 2011, according to AARP. In comparison, 2010 data indicates about 20 percent of Alaskans ages 50 to 64 had no medical insurance.

Medicare spent about $500 million on senior citizens’ health care in Alaska last year.

Secrest said AARP will hold an informational session in Juneau next month. The target audience is people who are still working as well as retirees. She said they need to learn about the options Congress is considering for both programs and then tell Congress what they think.

Click for Social Security options.

Click for Medicare options.

A terrorist is expected to visit the tiny University of Alaska Southeast Ketchikan campus on Tuesday.

In the real world, such events are not scheduled. But more and more they are prepared for, and that’s what the University of Alaska system has been doing over the last couple of years.

“Here we go again,” says Rick Forkel, University of Alaska Director of Emergency Management, when asked how the July 20 Aurora, Colorado shooting impacts local emergency preparation. The suspect, James Holmes, 24, allegedly killed 12 and injured 58 people in a movie theater.

Forkel has coordinated so-called “active shooter” exercises on other U-A campuses. He says the Ketchikan event has been planned for months, but incidents such as Aurora help first responders refine their preparation for the real thing.

“Any real world event like that just reinforces why we do these types of exercises so that we can test our response procedures and get our personnel comfortable with those procedures. And that just breeds confidence,” he says.

In 2010, an active-shooter drill was staged on the UAS Juneau campus. Since then, response procedures have been refined, and a statewide notification system put in place. Forkel says that will be tested in Tuesday’s Ketchikan campus exercise.

“We all have a need to know. There are different audiences that need to know and need to respond and we’re going to be testing that very capability,” he says.

He says that well-designed exercises or real world responses present big opportunities to test emergency preparation. “Like the Aurora incident – you don’t have to be there to learn lessons from it.”

UAS will soon hire an emergency preparedness coordinator for the three UAS campuses, to be headquartered in Juneau. The UAA and UAF campuses each have a coordinator, and Forkel has been filling that role for Southeast. He says several applicants were interviewed last week and he expects the finalist to be on the job within the next two months.

View University of Alaska Southeast Campuses in a larger map

The University of Alaska Fairbanks will hire eight new scientists thanks to a $20-million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation.

The award, announced Tuesday, will fund a five-year, interdisciplinary project focusing on how Alaska communities adapt to environmental and social change. It’s being dubbed the Alaska Adapting to Changing Environments, or ACE program.

A total of 47 researchers will focus on three regions of the state. In Southcentral, scientists will examine the effects of land cover and precipitation changes on fisheries and tourism in the Kenai River watershed. Researchers in Northern Alaska will look at how subsistence is affected by thawing permafrost. Here in Southeast, the focus will be on glacial recession near Juneau.

UAF Vice Chancellor of Research Mark Myers and UAA biology professor Lilian Alessa will serve as co-directors.

The Federal Department of Education has given Alaska a waiver for one of the requirements created by the No Child Left Behind Act.

Under the decision,  the state would be allowed to freeze its student proficiency targets –formally referred to as Annual Measurable Objectives —  for one year if Alaska commits to applying for a larger package of waivers by September sixth.

Eric Fry, with the state’s Department of Education, says by freezing the target levels,  local school districts and individual schools will be more likely to  meet the Annual Yearly Progress requirements.

The reason that’s beneficial is that at the same time we’re doing this freeze, we’re also putting together an application for a comprehensive waiver in which the state would implement its own accountability system.  So it wouldn’t make sense to run the schools and districts through another year of the old NCLB when we’re going to be changing things pretty soon.

The frozen targets will require that eighty-three percent of students be proficient in English and seventy five percent of students be proficient in math. The system the state is planning to submit for federal  approval would still hold the local schools responsible – only using a different method of determining accountability and with different consequences if a student fails. He says the state plan avoids much of the wasted efforts of the current federal standards.

Fairbanks Democrat Bob Miller is a long-time advocate of getting waivers from the federal system. He says twenty six states have now been granted waivers from the federal controls that were proving ineffective. He ‘s encouraged that Alaska may soon follow.

They want us to succeed.  They’ve recognized the gaps.  They’ve recognized the flaws in the No Child Left Behind System.  And they’re happy to work with every state including ours.  So the State of Alaska is gaining more and more control over our own destiny, and that can never be a bad thing.

Fry says the target freeze will go into place immediately – with tests that students took last April and results that will be released next month. He’s  says other changes will take place at the state level over several years.

Teachers are going to start implementing the new standards soon,  the students will not actually be assessed on them until the Spring of 2016.  So they’re have several years of being educated under the new standards before being assessed under them.

The federal waiver must be formally accepted by the state Board of Education at a teleconferenced meeting on  July 24^th. It will require the adoption of new regulations that are already out for public comment. The Board last month approved its new standards for accountability that will be submitted to the federal government in September.

The U.S. Department of Education has approved the State of Alaska’s waiver request for one of the requirements created by the No Child Left Behind Act.

The decision allows the state to freeze its student proficiency targets for one year if state officials commit to applying for a larger package of waivers by September 6th.

The offer must be formally accepted by the state Board of Education at its July 24th meeting in Anchorage.

The single waiver would still require the state’s schools to meet federal Adequate Yearly Progress standards under No Child Left Behind. But the scores would be based on targets set for the 2010-2011 school year. The department anticipates the waiver will allow more schools to meet the law’s requirements than if they were to face the new levels.

The Board of Education last month (June) approved new standards for accountability that will be submitted to the federal government in September with the hope of obtaining more waivers from federal rules.