Farewell
By Kayla Gahagan
It is with mixed feelings that I am writing this post, which will be the final entry for Learning Curve. After much discussion with editors and fellow reporters, we have decided that our efforts to provide you with the most accurate, timely education news every day is to spend more time reporting and less time blogging.
While this job has afforded me the opportunity to shoot videos for the web site, write a column for the print education page and occasionally shoot a picture or two, my primary role is that of a print reporter and while I will miss the discussion we have had on here, I’m excited to be able to devote more time to that.
It’s an exciting time for education right now - at the local, state and national levels. We have a new president, as well as new state and federal secretaries of education who have the daunting task of shaping and reforming No Child Left Behind and leading a public education system that faces the challenge of educating students in a global marketplace.
Right here in town, we are less than a week away from a school board election that could seat two new board members. I’ve written many times about what the district faces in terms of decisions about facilities, the budget and curbing drop out rates.
Now, more than ever, the community needs to be involved in discussions and that’s what I love about being a journalist - I get to ask questions, dig for information, listen and then write stories that hopefully inform, stimulate conversation and serve as a catalyst for change, if it is needed.
Before there were blogs, there was e-mail. Before there was e-mail, there were phones. Before there were phones, there were face-to-face conversations. I’m still here, at my desk, available by all those means - to hear what you have to say, to listen and to write the stories that this community needs to hear.
On behalf of myself and my collegue Barbara Soderlin (who has added an immense amount of funny and thoughtful entries to this blog) it has been a pleasure to write for you on this blog and we thank you for reading and for responding.
We’ll see you in the paper.