Mayor Mark Begich remarks
Molly Hootch 30-Year Anniversary Review
8:30 a.m.; Feb. 27, 2004; UAACuddyCenter

(Note: This is not a precise transcript of the Mayor’s remarks.)

Good morning – thanks for participating in this important symposium.

You may wonder what the mayor of Anchorage has to do with a 30-year old lawsuit involving rural schools. When a young Legal Services lawyer named Chris Cooke filed the suits that got the ball rolling in 1971, I was in elementary school here in Anchorage.

But as you know, the Molly Hootch case is one of the most far-reaching public policy decisions in modern Alaska history. It not only affected how students are educated in the smallest rural Alaska villages, it continues to affect education and public policy across this state, including in Alaska’s largest city.

I suspect most people in this room know that Anchorage is home to about 40 percent of our state’s population. What all of you may not know is that Anchorage is also Alaska’s largest village, with more Native Alaskans than any other community in the state.

Of the nearly 50,000 students in the Anchorage School District, about 13 percent or more than 6,000 students are Alaska Natives. They are one of the reasons Anchorage enjoys such a rich cultural diversity, with 93 different languages spoken in our schools.

Unfortunately, some Native students in our schools also have their share of problems, at least according to the statistics – higher dropout rates, less success in federal No Child Left Behind benchmarks. We’re trying to address some of these problems with specialized programs, like at both East and West high schools, which serve over 500 Native students.

Carol Comeau and Anchorage educators do an excellent job with too few resources.

I sometimes wonder what Anchorage schools and our state generally would be like without the Molly Hootch case. Without a doubt, I believe we’d be significantly worse off. Instead of rural students getting good educations in their own communities, many would have been forced to move to urban areas. This would have seriously eroded the strength of Native villages across our state.

Consider the case of Rampart, which was forced to close its school a few years ago. Families still living in the village with school-aged children have largely left, moved to Fairbanks or elsewhere.

Unfortunately, we’re starting to see that trend on a larger scale because of our state’s inability to deal with our fiscal crisis. State assistance to communities has been cut further and further in recent years. Anchorage lost $11 million from state cuts to Municipal Assistance and Revenue Sharing. That’s a big hit. But we’ve been able to adjust because we have the tax base to support it.

That’s not the case in rural Alaska. A few weeks ago, I participated in a state mayor’s conference in Juneau. I heard from one rural mayor after another how they are being forced to cut the most vital services – public safety, road maintenance, utilities.

That’s a chief reason why the state’s mayors agreed unanimously to send a wake up call to the Legislature to do something about the fiscal gap this year. Our own Assembly also weighed into the debate, putting an advisory vote on this April’s city election urging legislative action on the budget gap.

Time will tell whether our legislators pay attention.

In the meantime, we know that so much of what happens in Alaska – both good and bad - is a result of what happens outside our city’s borders. Certainly, the wealth of Alaska’s urban centers comes from rural Alaska – both in terms of natural resources and our rich cultural diversity. I suspect many of you are familiar with the report produced periodically by the regional corporation presidents about the economic value of Native corporations.

It found that the 13 Native profit corporations and 30 village corporations produce nearly 3 billion-dollars in revenues and assets for our state. And that doesn’t begin to account for the additional revenue, jobs and other benefits created by villages and traditional councils.

I believe as Anchorage benefits from the wealth produced by Native organizations and rural communities, we have an obligation to rural Alaska. To open the doors of our community, to do all we can to make sure the benefits are not a one-way street but a two-way street.

That’s one reason I was proud to stand with rural Alaska a few years ago when I was on the Assembly. That’s when the legislature was pushing an education bill that would have benefited Anchorage, but would have hurt rural Alaska. I led the charge against it and said every community in this state needs to be treated fairly and equally.

We are in this boat together, rural Alaska and Anchorage. That includes not only education, but health issues, crime, economic development – the whole gamut.

I look forward to a report of your discussion of the implications of the Molly Hootch case for the future. It was certainly a ground-breaking case which will be felt across our state for generations. Thank you for letting me visit with you.

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