Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

Turnout at Saturday night’s Chilkat Valley Preschool fundraiser suggests there’s broad support for a new preschool building in Haines. So why not ask borough voters if they’d like to build the school as a classroom addition to the Haines School?

Otherwise, it looks like we’re in for a slew of preschool fundraising dinners, raffles and auctions competing with all the town’s other fundraising dinners, raffles and auctions, in order to put up a modular building on Presbyterian Church land near our waterfront.

Critics contend an arrangement with the school district isn’t doable because the preschool is “private.” The only thing private about CVP is that the borough only marginally funds it. It’s open to all children. If taxpayers won’t fund a preschool program, perhaps the non-profit CVP could still operate the school using a Haines School classroom.

Private-public partnerships, we’re told, are the way of the future, and they’re not unheard of here. We pay private outfits to erect our public buildings, build and maintain roads and provide myriad other services to the municipality.

Our leaders often seem to be working from an unspoken assumption that taxpayers are unwilling bear any new public expense, but history tells us otherwise. Haines voters have approved taxes not only for construction of schools and infrastructure, but also for services like tourism promotion and medical service. People will pay for what they value. What harm is done by asking, even if just in an advisory vote, about funding a preschool room at the Haines School?

The findings on the the importance of early learning are in. Publicly-funded preschools are spreading around the world. Haines could be at the head of this parade, instead of dragging tail behind it. Also, we all might get a few more Saturday nights at home, having dinner with our families.

- Tom Morphet