Your Unused Laptop Can Be A Life Changer For A Foster Kid

As our students are settling into the routine of being back at school there is one group of Alaskan kids whose life is anything but routine – and a youth driven group is asking folks to help.

Facing Foster Care in Alaska (FFCA) is collecting gently used laptops, and funds to buy new ones, for the near 3,000 Alaskan youth who are in foster care every month.

The program has placed hundred of laptops with foster youth over the last few years, and the benefits of this program are starting to show – significantly more foster youth are graduating from high school, many from online programs.

Representative Les Gara and Amanda Metivier 

FFCA Amanda Metivier: “Maybe they get behind because they are moving or whatever happens in their family home before they come into foster care, this allows them the opportunity to catch up through online programs or even get ahead.”

Nationally, only 50% of foster youth graduate from high school. The deck is stacked against them with some Alaskan students experiencing 20 or more foster home placements – which translates to frequent school changes.

Without access to technology and essential items, and twice the emotional problems as their peers, research shows that foster children face a growing digital divide with more than 80% of foster youth not having consistent access to a computer.

Representative Les Gara (D D-20) feels that computer technology and access to the Internet are now a part of everyday education, social interaction, and fundamental to building technology skills needed in the workplace.

Representative Les Gara: “It normalizes a very disrupted life and is necessary if you want kids to succeed.”

Story as aired on KRSM News:

http://www.radiokenai.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Dorene-on-your-used-laptop-can-be-a-life-changer-for-a-foster-kid.mp3

Do Deleting Comments Block Free Speech?

Courtesy of Ron Niebrugge

If you don’t like them, ignore them, that’s the advise your mother gave you as a kid.  How that translates into social media when you are an elected public figure has yet to be determined.

After the ruckus caused by Trump’s Twitter-gate, Representative Scott Kawasaki (D D-1) asked the Alaska Legislature’s Division of Legal and Research Services to weigh in on a legislator’s right to block users or suppress comments on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter.

Several members of the Alaska State Legislature have admitted to being either social media blockers or deleters, like Anchorage attorney Les Gara who represents the Spenard area.

Representative Scott Kawasaki (D D-1): “Les Gara actually blocks like the oil industry folks, and they get pissed off at him.  So it was sort of a thing,”

Representative Gara says, not my thing.

Representative Les Gara (D D-20); “There are a couple of campaign operatives, ….they are just there to spend money against you and spin what you have to say. … It’s very few people.  It is a small handful.”

Scott Kawasaki

In 2011, Legislative council adopted social media guidelines, but they didn’t address blocking users or suppressing comments, and if it makes a difference if the activity is happening on their personal page or their official public figure page. The differences between a designated public forum and a limited public forum have become increasingly unclear when paired with the many nuances of the internet.

Representative Scott Kawasaki (D D-1): “It is really fascinating, ’cause you wouldn’t think that it should be a problem, but then the memo seems to say, well is it common property?  Are you therefor supposed to allow access to anybody no matter what – that kind of thing – or is it free speech, and you can curb free speech.” 

In a brief responding to Kawasaki’s question, Leg Legal found that according to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a limited public forum is a sub-category of a designated public forum that refers to a type of nonpublic forum that the government has intentionally opened to certain groups, and that the U.S Supreme Court has recognized that there is “no basis for qualifying the level of First Amendment scrutiny that should be applied to the internet,” noting that the basic principles of freedom of speech do not change when applied to a new medium, such as social media.

Whether a public official’s use of a social media account creates a designated or limited public forum is unsettled. There is no case law governing this issue in Alaska, so the question has yet to come before a judge or jury.

Story as aired on KSRM News:

http://www.radiokenai.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Jennifer-on-Social-Media-Block-.mp3