With elementary music and other school cuts facing Fairbanks, there's no time for Borough Assembly grandstanding on the PFD

Last week the school district notified music teachers that there will be no band or orchestra at the Fairbanks elementary schools next year because of budget cuts.

This plan deserves to be reversed, as music education is a vital part of the elementary years for hundreds of kids.

While the district jumped the gun with this letter, as the school board has yet to settle the school budget, major cuts to local education appear to be on the way.

The school board, our legislators and the borough assembly should let us know what they plan to do to prevent the degradation of the public schools in Fairbanks. The dreams of economic development that many people like to talk about can easily fall apart if the schools falter.

So far, I don't see any sign that the school board, our legislators or the borough assembly have come to grips with the crisis facing our schools.

And when two borough assembly members pretend that they have the time to bloviate about the need for bigger Permanent Fund Dividends, I need to remind them that they do not.

Aaron Lojewski and Frank Tomaszewski should be concerned with the matters over which they have some authority as members of the assembly, not with sharing their crowd-pleasing view that people want bigger dividend checks from the state.

The two wrote a remarkably sloppy resolution that distorts the history of the Alaska Permanent Fund and the 1976 vote that created it. There’s an error in the title that anyone in junior high can identify.

The resolution is political grandstanding and the assembly should not be wasting time with it.

Tomaszewski is already running for the Legislature and this measure is a campaign stunt to show that he wants to give more money to people. Great.

Where is the rest of his plan for state government? On his campaign website he claims to favor common sense, a “practical budget” and less regulation, while being a “voice for the people,” four servings of meaningless jabber.

The easiest thing in the world is to announce that you want bigger dividends, without mentioning the unpopular tradeoffs that are required to make that happen. If you don’t know the tradeoffs, you don’t belong in public office.

Nowhere in the text is the Lojewski or the Tomaszewski plan to pay for state and local government—including such basic and important educational programs as band and orchestra instruction.