Opinion A11
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THE DAILY HERALD
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WWW.HERALDNET.COM
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EvCC’s student focus honored four-year schools, improvement in student outcomes and equity in outcomes for students of all racial, ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. “We’ve been moving toward more student completions, more community penetration, more cooperative arrangements with K-12 schools, more success with transfers to universities,” said EvCC President David Beyer. “All those have contributed to where we are as an institution.” EvCC, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, serves more than 19,000 students each year, offering education that results in twoyear associate’s degrees and transfers to four-year colleges, training for certificates of completion in technical and career fields, professional training, English as a second language courses and completion of high school diploma requirements. About 30 percent of its student population are minorities. About 80 percent of students stay in the region after completing their studies. Along with its main campus in north Everett, which it shares with the Everett
University Center and the Washington State University North Puget Sound, EvCC has its East County Campus in Monroe, a cosmetology program in Marysville, its Aviation Maintenance program at Paine Field, its Corporate and Continuing Education program in south Everett, and its Aerospace and Advanced Manufacturing center in north Everett. To be considered as a finalist for Aspen’s prize, EvCC must now complete a portfolio that will further detail its successes, a job that falls to Heather Bennett, the college’s executive director for Institutional Effectiveness and Resource Development. It’s a matter of packaging data she already has on hand regarding graduation rates of EvCC’s students and of students who have gone on to four-year schools, retention of students and employment rates for former students. EvCC, Bennett said, also can point to its community engagement, including twice annual community events on a variety of topics and work on economic vitality and
workforce training in Arlington, Darrington and other Stillaguamish Valley communities following the Oso landslide. The chief focus remains, she said, on serving the whole student, offering the services that students, many who have commitments to jobs and family, need to complete their education, including financial aid and resources for their daily lives. “What shows up in the stats, what we see in the grad rates is a steady climb of individual success because we’re paying more attention to student needs,” Bennett said. Whether or not it’s named as a finalist later this fall, Bennett expects EvCC will show up repeatedly on that list of 150 colleges. The top honor from Aspen, to be announced in 2017, includes a $1 million award to the winning school. For a college that faces financial challenges all the time, Beyer said there would be a lot of discussion about what to do with a $1 million windfall. “No doubt, the focus would be on students,” Beyer said.
the Legislature acts. Think how it would be if suddenly your family lost 24 percent of its income. Something would have to be cut! Not only would funds for basic education have to be cut but funding for safety, emergency preparedness, transportation, technology, staffing and extracurricular activities would be in jeopardy. The Arlington School District has been recognized by the state auditor and at the federal level for its sound fiscal management. The Puget Sound Business Journal has recognized our neighborhood as the fourthbest in the Puget Sound based on the quality of its schools. We urge you to join us in voting “yes” for the District’s Educational Programs and Operations Levy! It is not a new tax but a renewal.
Our district has grown tremendously in recent years. Our overcrowded elementary schools are bursting. The new elementary P-5 campus and Early Learning Center are vital needs. The new school will benefit all students and families because it will reduce overcrowding in all the elementary schools. Our district boundaries are very different from the city boundaries. LSSD includes Marysville, Snohomish and Granite Falls. Residents of our district vote on levies and bonds and pay corresponding taxes. The improvements addressed in the bond will positively impact everyone in Lake Stevens, not just the students (although I believe their education is the most important factor). The district already houses many community programs that we enjoy. Improvements to aging facilities (such as athletic fields and the LSHS pool) will benefit all of us! Many people choose to live in Lake Stevens not only because of the natural beauty, but because of the quality education. It’s true that the district can’t draw on a big business tax base, and therefore and the cost is passed along to homeowners. But with thoughtful planning and growth, the cost burdens on homeowners may someday adjust, but our kids need us now. We cannot wait. Our district has worked diligently to offer the best possible plan for the future of Lake Stevens (approved by the public, which participated in the online survey about needs and concerns) and we need to do our part to support that plan by approving the bond.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR ■■OPINION PAGE
Military-tobacco editorial off base Regarding the Monday editorial, “Help military ban tobacco”: Militarily speaking; it seems your “In Our View” anti-smoking effort was off base. The editorial board’s view regarding state law is fair game. But the rambling arguments, quotes and purported facts in your editorial were disjointed and likely misleading to the average reader. I’m retired military, I smoke. I agree; people should not smoke, and if they smoke, they should try to stop. But the headline “Help military ban tobacco” was not on point — the military shouldn’t, and probably couldn’t, ban smoking, any more than any other employer. Could The Herald enact such a ban? The military can prohibit sales consistent with state law. That makes sense, and I do not object. The military exchange systems have already enacted policies to ensure exchanges (not commissaries as the editorial indicates) sell tobacco products at prices equivalent to the local community. (Myself and other military people I know buy ours at a Native Organization operated outlet which are cheaper than the exchange anyway.) The editorial was not specific in how much of the 2012 $125 million in exchange profits was from tobacco sales. But, exchange profits fund morale programs and services for the entire military population. Shopping at exchanges and commissaries is an important long-standing government-made promise of a non-pay benefit for active duty and retirees. Congress was absolutely “on target” in forbidding transient defense officials from cherry-picking what things they want to ban/sell in our exchanges. The editorial’s political pressure to ban any specific exchange sales, is as irritating and hypocritical to me, as the political pressure to prohibit bans likely was to your editorial’s author. Let the customers and the marketplace decide what sells, where, and for how much. For exchanges, the customers are those who earned that right/privilege through their service to our country. John Miller Marysville
Have your say Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Email: letters@heraldnet.com Mail: Letters section The Daily Herald P.O. Box 930 Everett, WA 98206
■■ARLINGTON SCHOOLS
Levy will ensure continued quality Renewal of the Arlington School District’s levy for Educational Programs and Operations is of high priority for all of us because “good schools make good communities.” This gives us all a vested interest in seeing that the proposition passes. We agreed to chair the Citizen’s Committee working on passage of the levy because we have additional vested interests. John and Kimberly have four children in our schools and Dave has two grandchildren in school with one more soon to join. He also has several nieces and nephews attending our schools. About 24 percent of the district’s revenue comes from our local levy. It includes funding for basic education that the state Supreme Court has said should be paid fully by the state, but is not. So far the Legislature has not figured out a way to accomplish this, so reliance on the special levy is necessary. Our school directors are committed to rolling back that portion of the levy used for basic education if
Kimberly Meno, John Meno and Dave Duskin, co-chairs Citizens Committee for Arlington Schools
■■LAKE STEVENS
Bond will help students, citizens Please vote yes for the Lake Stevens School District bond. As a longtime resident, parent, homeowner and alum of the Lake Stevens School District, I cannot express how important it is to maintain the excellent school district that Lake Stevens is known for. Our students test higher than students in neighboring districts. Our schools regularly receive awards for excellence. Our esteemed teachers and administrators work long hours to maintain the quality of education that is expected.
Josh O’Connor, Publisher Jon Bauer, Editorial Page Editor Neal Pattison, Executive Editor Carol MacPherson, Editorial Writer
FRIDAY, 01.29.2016
IN OUR VIEW | EvCC’s Aspen Institute honor
Years ago, the knock on community colleges was that they were little more than “high schools with ashtrays.” Thankfully, the ashtrays and the cigarettes are long gone. And the perception that a community college education is second-rate also is disappearing in a puff of smoke. Everett Community College provides a prime example with the news this week that it is among the top 150 community colleges and technical schools of the more than 1,100 in the nation, as judged by the Aspen Institute, an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C. And it may be among the elite of those 150. Since 2011, Aspen every two years has reviewed each of those 150 schools, named 10 finalists, then awarded its Prize for College Excellence to the top school. Walla Walla Community College won the honor in 2013. For the first time, EvCC was named among the 150 top colleges following a review of federal data by Aspen in terms of student success in degree completion and transfers to
Editorial Board
Carrie Blankenship Lake Stevens
GOP’s choice is populism vs. conservatism
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t’s hard to believe that the United States, having resisted the siren song of socialism during its entire 20th-century heyday (the only major democracy to do so), should suddenly succumb to its charms a generation after its intellectual demise. Indeed, the prospect of socialist Bernie Sanders, whatever his current CHARLES momentum, KRAUTHAMMER winning the Democratic nomination remains far-fetched. The Dems would be risking a November electoral disaster of historic dimensions. Yet there is no denying how far Sanders has pulled his party to the left — and how hard the establishment candidate, Hillary Clinton, has been racing to catch up. The Republicans, on the other hand, are dealing with a full-scale riot. The temptation they face is trading in a century of conservatism for Trumpism. The 2016 presidential race has turned into an epic contest between the ethnonationalist populism of Donald Trump and traditional conservatism, though in two varieties: the scorched-earth fundamentalist version of Ted Cruz, and a reformist version represented by Marco Rubio (and several so-called establishment candidates) — and articulated most fully by non-candidate Paul Ryan and a cluster of highly productive thinkers and policy wonks dubbed “reformicons.” Trump insists that he’s a conservative, but in his pronouncements and policies, conservatism seems more of a rental than an ideological home. In radically different ways, Trump and Sanders are addressing the deep anxiety stemming from the secular stagnation in wages and living standards that has squeezed the middle and working classes for a generation. Sanders locates the villainy in a billionaire class that has rigged both the economic and political system. Trump blames foreigners, most prominently those cunning Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese and Saudis who’ve been taking merciless advantage of us, in concert with America’s own leaders who are, alternatively, stupid and incompetent or bought and corrupt. Hence Trump’s most famous policy recommendations: anti-immigrant, including the forced deportation of 11 million people; anti-trade, with a 45 percent tariff on Chinese goods and a 35 percent tariff on U.S. manufacturing moved to Mexico; and anti-Muslim, most notoriously a complete ban on entry into the U.S. Trump has limited concern for the central tenet of American conservatism — limited government. The most telling example is his wholehearted support for “eminent domain,” i.e. the forcible appropriation by government of private property. Trump called it “wonderful.” Trump has not yet called Vladimir Putin wonderful but he has taken a shine to the swaggering mini-czar who seems to run his trains on time. When informed that Putin kills opponents and journalists, Trump’s initial reaction was, “Well, I think that our country does plenty of killing, also,” the kind of moronic what-about-the-Crusades moral equivalence that conservatives have railed against for decades. Cruz is often lumped with Trump in the “anti-establishment” camp. That suited Cruz tactically for a while, but it’s fairly meaningless, given that “establishment” can mean anything these days. And given the huge gulf between the political philosophies of the two men. Cruz is a genuine conservative — austere, indeed radical, so much so that he considers mainstream congressional conservatives apostates. My personal preference is for the third ideological alternative, the reform conservatism that locates the source of our problems not in heartless billionaires or crafty foreigners, but in our superannuated, increasingly sclerotic 20th-century welfare-state structures. Their desperate need for reform has been overshadowed by the new populism, but Speaker Ryan is determined to introduce a serious reform agenda in this year’s Congress — boring stuff like welfare reform, health care reform, tax reform and institutional congressional reforms. Paired with a president like Rubio (or Chris Christie or Carly Fiorina, to go long-shot), such an agenda would give conservatism its best opportunity since Reagan to become the country’s governing philosophy. Unless the GOP takes the populist leap. In which case, a conservative restoration will be a long time coming. Charles Krauthammer’s email address is letters@charleskrauthammer.com.