{"id":88815,"date":"2022-07-19T22:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-20T06:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/letters\/opinion-grading-juneau-school-district\/"},"modified":"2022-07-19T22:30:00","modified_gmt":"2022-07-20T06:30:00","slug":"opinion-grading-juneau-school-district","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/letters\/opinion-grading-juneau-school-district\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Grading Juneau School District"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I get my property tax bill, it reminds me that local government costs money, especially its schools. A little more than half of Juneau&rsquo;s property tax revenue, about $30 million, goes to our public schools, but that&rsquo;s only a third of their total budget. The rest comes mainly from the state. But regardless of funding source, my main question remains: are public school students learning their 3 R&rsquo;s? The answer surprised me.<\/p>\n<p>In a 2021 publication, the School District said, &ldquo;nearly 40% of our students are not meeting grade level expectations in reading and math &#8211; both key skills for future success.&rdquo; By most accounts, COVID hasn&rsquo;t helped.<\/p>\n<p>Back when I started school, there were three letter grades: C for commendable, S for satisfactory, and N for needs improvement. Is it commendable or even satisfactory that a large percentage of Juneau&rsquo;s public school students need more help with their reading, writing, and arithmetic?<\/p>\n<p><em>Mike Clemens,<\/em><\/p>\n<p><ins><em>Juneau<\/em><\/ins><\/p>\n<p><ins><em>&#8226; Columns, My Turns and Letters to the Editor represent the view of the author, not the view of the Juneau Empire. Have something to say? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/opinion\/have-something-to-say\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Here&rsquo;s how to submit a My Turn or letter.<\/a><\/em><\/ins><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Are public school students learning their 3 R&rsquo;s? The answer surprised me. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":88816,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":14,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-88815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-letters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88815"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=88815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}