The proposed school district budget will eliminate the IGNITE program as we know it. This will be devastating to thousands of students in the Anchorage public school system.

IGNITE is a highly-popular enrichment program for gifted students. Created in the 1970’s, it has inspired and challenged generations of students at a formative stage of their lives: Grades 2-6.

While budgets must be controlled, cuts that directly impact student learning must be a last resort. The proposed “redesign” is in fact a decimation of this program. It will affect almost every school in the district. It will displace dozens of talented educators with decades of irreplaceable experience.

More troubling, research shows that:

• Pull-out programs like IGNITE raise student achievement;
• They have a long-term positive impact on their cognitive and social development;
• When eliminated, parents report children experience "a decline in energy, curiosity, and intrinsic motivation to achieve at high levels and begin to disengage from the traditional curriculum."
• The achievement level of high ability students falls dramatically when they are required to do routine work at a routine pace.

A school board member acknowledges the proposed cuts are “not at all painless” and that “no one thinks this is an improvement in anything other than the reduced cost from having fewer staff.”

We encourage the school district to reject the proposed cuts to the IGNITE program. The existing IGNITE Program CAN be funded. It is a choice of priorities and utilizing resources!