A packed house turned out to listen to Gov. Sean Parnell speak at the Chugiak-Eagle River Chamber of Commerce luncheon last week.

Parnell touched on a variety of topics from Point Thomson gas leases to tax credits for Alaska's tourism industry, but the majority of his presentation focused on a brand new initiative called Governor's Performance Scholarship.

The governor's proposal calls for merit-based scholarships that would be awarded to Alaskan students who stay in state for higher education. The governor uses higher education as a broad umbrella term for trade schools, the University of Alaska system and private educational institutions, such as Alaska Pacific University.

Under GPS, students who earn a 3.5 GPA would get 100 percent of their tuition covered, benchmarked to the tuition for the UA system. Students who have a B average would get a 75 percent tuition award. And C+ students would receive a 50 percent break.

Parnell proposes to pay for this program by drawing a fence around $400 million of almost $8 billion currently in the Constitutional Budget Reserve Fund and Statutory Budget Reserve Fund, and then pay for the program off of the earnings of the $400 million - the way an endowment works.

"I will not drain the general fund to pay for a brand new program," he told chamber members.

The audience's response? Generally positive.

Members brought up some valid questions, among them: Does Alaska have the infrastructure and personnel to handle the increased enrollment this program would generate? What about home-school and nontraditional students? Would there be any criteria to stay in Alaska after graduation? Does this really target the group that's most in need of help?

A lot of these finer print questions will be mulled over when the governor's proposal lands on the desk of legislators during the upcoming session.

The governor said he purposefully left room in his proposal for others to give their input.

All in all, directing resources toward education is a positive step.

No amount of investment will bolster the state without people who have the know how to creatively and efficiently implement projects.

The Governor's Performance Scholarship rightly rewards all levels of academic achievement. Students who earn As and Bs clearly place a high priority on success in school. But many C students are working just as hard as those A and B students - they just have a little harder time getting over the hurdles.

By providing incentives to "middle of the pack" students, the program reaches those most in danger of becoming part of the 34 percent of Alaskan high school students who drop out before graduating.

While the program moves the state in the right direction, the Governor's Performance Scholarship shouldn't be looked at as the end-all-be-all fix. It needs to be paired with other initiatives and support services. These include investing in school counselors, creating more opportunities along the lines of the vocational curriculum at the King Career Center, and, for crying out loud, paying teachers what they're worth.

Also, the state needs to look for ways to improve the quality of in-state higher education institutions, making it more attractive for students to stick around.