According to State of Alaska records, "Rodney Blum" has not been licensed as an engineer in Alaska.  So I question his knowledge about Alaska's public schools.  

This huge state has lots of different school districts; so Blum's comment about "how bad" THE "public school system" is makes no sense and is not convincing.

Blum's comments remind me of what I call "engineer brain," closed and narrow minded.  He takes a complex subject -- the performance and operation of the Alaska (or Anchorage) public school system -- and tries to reduce it to simplistic slogans: "public schools bad" "teacher's union bad" "schools need to be fixed."  

School systems are not math equations.  There are a lot of moving parts.  But no matter what, Americans should be proud of their public schools.  People I've talked to over the years from outside the U.S. can't believe that everyone here is entitled to a free public education K-12.  So don't just trash public schools, help make them better.