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- [00:00]
Ben Townsend
Support for Alaska Public Media on Demand comes from alyeska Pipeline Service Company marking 47 years of commitment to operating the Trans Alaska Oil Pipeline. Learn more@olyeskapipeline.com.
- [00:19]
Randy Traney
It's every school district, all the school districts are facing a revenue problem.
- [00:25]
Casey Grove
Despite last year's funding increase, school districts brace for another round of deep cuts. From Alaska Public Media, this is statewide news on Alaska News nightly for Thursday, March 19th. Good evening. I'm Casey Grove. Also tonight, Juneau's big snow year is just one part of broader environmental change.
- [00:43]
Avery Elfeldt
A lot of the winters that people remember when they were growing up, we are seeing much fewer days of those kinds of winters.
- [00:50]
Casey Grove
Those stories and more tonight on Alaska News Nightly.
- [00:59]
Alex Solomon
The PFD application is open. Just a small amount of your PFD will help share local news and stories about Alaskans with Alaskans across this great state when you choose Alaska Public Media through Pick Click give.
- [01:14]
Casey Grove
Last year, Alaska lawmakers overcame two vetoes to increase the formula that determines public school funding by $700 per student. That followed years of pleas from families, teachers and local officials who said the state's public school system was at a breaking point. Schools had closed, classrooms were packed with 30 plus kids, and families were looking for another place to live. But now school districts around the state are bracing for another year of deep cuts. Alaska Public Media's Eric Stone explains the
- [01:45]
Eric Stone
school district in Alaska's fastest growing region could close three schools, and even that won't fully fill the $22.5 million hole in the Matsu Borough school district's budget. Part of it pretty simple, says Superintendent Randy Traney.
- [01:57]
Randy Traney
The actual boost to the BBSA was about $20.
- [02:02]
Eric Stone
The BSA is the base student allocation, the number in the funding formula that lawmakers increased. And Trainee says the idea that schools have $700 more per kid than they did last year simply isn't correct. In prior years, lawmakers included one time funding for schools, most recently $680 per student. So for Trainee, the BSA bump translated to an extra $20 per student, $700,000 for the whole mat su.
- [02:26]
Randy Traney
$700,000 in a budget of more than a quarter of a billion is essentially flat funding. And flat funding is a cut because of inflation.
- [02:38]
Eric Stone
A dollar this year is worth around 98 cents next year. Traney says he's glad the Legislature updated the bsa. It made education funding less ad hoc and more predictable. But he says districts like his are still in crisis. And he says it's not just big districts like his either.
- [02:53]
Randy Traney
It's every school district, all the school districts are facing a revenue problem.
- [02:59]
Eric Stone
School districts in Kenai and Juneau are reckoning with multimillion dollar shortfalls. Kodiak needs a million dollars in cuts to balance its budget. The state's biggest district in Anchorage is cutting hundreds of teachers and closing three schools and projecting tens of millions more in cuts next year. And they all cite the same reason, inadequate funding from the state. Anchorage parent Frances McLaughlin says it has his family contemplating a move to Washington.
- [03:23]
Rod Morrison
My younger daughter, Alice will have 34 classmates in her fifth grade next year. You need to raise the base student allocation or else you'll force me and every parent like me who can buy a plane ticket and move away. It's as simple as that.
- [03:42]
Eric Stone
Plenty already have. As of last year, enrollment across the state hit its lowest level since 1998. But trainee says it's more than just declining enrollment for fuel and health insurance, driving up unavoidable costs for his district especially. There's another important factor at play. The Matsu has embraced programs championed by the school choice movement, like charter schools and correspondence home schools. He says the options the district offers are popular. They keep students in the district, and Trainee says they've helped improve test scores.
- [04:10]
Randy Traney
The difficulty is choice costs money, right?
- [04:13]
Eric Stone
The more individualized a school district's offerings are, the less it can take advantage of a key traditional upside for public schools, economies of scale. Take an example. The Natsuo offers what it calls district wide high school courses, primarily career and technical classes, welding, that kind of thing. It gives students options they wouldn't have had at a neighborhood school. But it also costs money to get students from point A to point B.
- [04:34]
Randy Traney
So now we're spending more resources to support these choices that are wildly popular and they're good for kids. But choice costs money.
- [04:43]
Eric Stone
For now, Trainee is asking the Mat Su Borough assembly to make up some of the gap. But for districts outside organized boroughs, that's not an option. Rod Morrison leads the Southeast Island School District. That's seven schools on Prince of Wales island and one more on the southern tip of Baranof Island.
- [04:57]
Rod Morrison
I got currently one building principal that serves all my campuses. And so we're not, you know, they say cut the fat. We don't have any fat to cut. We have a hard time making payroll
- [05:09]
Jesse Terry
month to month this year.
- [05:11]
Eric Stone
Just as in years past, Alaskans have spent hours and hours pleading with lawmakers to boost school funding, and they have found support in some corners. But this year, unlike last year, key lawmakers say the state just can't afford to commit to a law long term increase in funding for education or really funding for anything without some source of new revenue. The governor, meanwhile, says revenue measures are a non starter without a package of spending control reforms that stand little chance of passing the legislature. We're only halfway through this year's session and a lot can change in not a lot of time. The Iran war has already scrambled politics in Juneau, but for now, even supportive lawmakers aren't offering any guarantees that schools will see in more money next year, not even $20. Reporting in Juneau, I'm Eric Stone.
- [06:05]
Casey Grove
Climate change has caused winter in Alaska's largest cities to warm more dramatically than other major cities across the U.S. but as KTO's Alex Solomon reports, this winter in Juneau does not match the overall trend.
- [06:18]
Alex Solomon
The long term climate trend shows Juneau should be getting warmer winters with less snow, but there's always year to year variation. This winter stands out as a prime example. It's something of an anomaly. Nicole Ferren is the warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Juneau. She says that's the difference between climate and weather.
- [06:39]
Avery Elfeldt
Climate is what you expect and weather is what you get.
- [06:42]
Alex Solomon
This winter, Juneau has received twice the amount of snow it gets on average. So the capital city has actually gotten more snow than Fairbanks and Anchorage combined. This is Juneau's sixth snowiest winter on record so far. Just a few more inches could move up that ranking. Even though it's mid March, there's more snow in the forecast. Juneau has also experienced a temperature yo yo between extended cold snaps and rapid warm ups this winter in the local climate record. Ferren says it was the second coldest December, one of the warmest January's and a roughly average February. It's ranked the 26th coldest winter, but she says looking at an overall average misses the full picture of what happened over the season.
- [07:23]
Avery Elfeldt
The winter as a whole ends up
- [07:26]
Alex Solomon
appearing pretty normal, even though it definitely
- [07:30]
Avery Elfeldt
doesn't feel normal because we had kind
- [07:32]
Alex Solomon
of two extremes in there. Anyone with a shovel can tell you that this has been a particularly wintry winter. But over the long term, the season is growing warmer with less snow in Juneau and around the state during the past few decades, more than two thirds of Juneau's winter days have risen above temperatures that were typical of the past. In Anchorage, a little over half of its winter days are warmer than they used to be. That's according to a report by Climate Central, a nonprofit research group that analyzed 245 major U.S. cities using daily average temperature data from NOAA weather stations. Caitlin Trudeau is a senior climate science research associate at Climate Central and wrote the report called Shorter Winters. She says the season isn't necessarily disappearing. It's just not as cold as it used to be. And her goal was to quantify by
- [08:21]
Avery Elfeldt
how much the winters of the past. A lot of the winters that people remember when they were growing up, we are seeing much fewer days of those kinds of winters.
- [08:30]
Alex Solomon
Trudeau's analysis was based on a similar one by Brian Brettschneider. He's a senior climate scientist with the National Weather Service in Alaska and reanalyzed the data over a call with ktoo. Compared to Trudeau's results, his analysis found fewer winter days have warmed in Juneau and Anchorage closer to a third of the season.
- [08:48]
Bret Schneider
In the areas where there are big changes, what can seem like trivial differences in the methodology can have outsized impacts.
- [08:57]
Alex Solomon
The main differences in the methods were that Brett Schneider looked at an earlier period, used slightly higher temperature thresholds, and smoothed out the data differently. Neither analysis has been peer reviewed, but Brettschneider says that no matter how you look at the data, it's clear that Alaska's winters are losing their trademark chill. Climate change is causing Alaska to warm faster than anywhere else in the country, and it's particularly noticeable in the winter. It's called Arctic amplification. Bret Schneider says it's driven by melting sea ice and less snowfall.
- [09:27]
Bret Schneider
Because snow acts like a mirror, it reflects solar energy back out into space. Right. So with fewer days of snow in the ground, those days are notably warmer than they used to be. With less of the Arctic covered in sea ice, more of the oceanic warmth can be liberated to the atmosphere.
- [09:48]
Alex Solomon
According to NOAA data that Climate Central analyzed, Anchorage's average winter temperature rose 4.6 degrees Fahrenheit between 1970 and 2025. In Juneau, it rose 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit. Since Juneau's winter temperatures typically hover around the freezing point of water, a spike in temperature can quickly turn snow to rain. A 2022 report by local scientists at the Alaska Coastal Rainforest center predicts that the snowpack in Southeast will decline significantly by the end of the century by as much as 22 or even 58%, depending on the rate that humans pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. In Juneau, I'm Alex Solomon.
- [10:31]
Casey Grove
Still to come on Alaska News Nightly, the Iditarod's rookie of the year thanks his dogs and his wife after a big first finish.
- [10:38]
Jesse Terry
And so to see them perform and do what they do and have her here is really special.
- [10:45]
Casey Grove
That's ahead. Stay with us.
- [10:47]
Avery Elfeldt
Hi, I'm Avery Elfeldt, a reporter with the Alaska Desk. That's a joint reporting effort from Alaska Public Media, khns, where I work in Haines, and other public radio stations in Anchorage, Fairbanks and the Aleutians. It allows us to connect you with the issues happening in communities all across the state. You can hear our stories during the morning news on Alaska News Nightly or online@alaskapublic.org the Alaska Desk is only possible with the support of grants and listeners like you. Thank you.
- [11:17]
Casey Grove
Nine seismic stations in Alaska are fully funded again after a new agreement with federal and state agencies. Five of the stations are in the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands, a highly active seismic region. The deal between the national oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Alaska Fairbanks took effect on March 1. The National Weather Service will now purchase seismic data from the university's Alaska Earthquake center directly under contract rather than through a grant, which got defunded last year. Curtis Marshall directs the National Weather Service's Commercial Data Program. He said in an email that this change ensures consistency and efficiency, and it also ensures stable budget resources. The five Aleutian and Pribilof stations sit near Unalaska, Atka, Nikolski, False Pass and St. Paul Island. Greg Peters is project manager for the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands Local Emergency Planning Committee in Alaska. He said in an email to KUCB that the upgrade matters enormously for remote communities in the region. That's because a nearby earthquake in the Aleutians can send a tsunami wave ashore to communities in just minutes. Peters also said the investment goes beyond emergency response. He said the stations also support the scientific research that helps refine hazard models and improve preparedness planning across the region. The state of Alaska is delaying construction on the first phase of a controversial ferry terminal proposed to connect Juneau and Haines due to a permitting issue. Work on the first phase of the Cascade Point ferry terminal project was originally planned for late summer. That would have entailed the construction of an access road, a new bridge, a gate and an upland staging area, but not the ferry terminal itself. The state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities said this week that the agency needs more time to work on its permit due to a change in direction from the U.S. army Corps of Engineers years. In a notice, the agency said it will now postpone construction until after 2026. Initially, the Army Corps told DOT that it could apply for a permit with complete information about Stage one of the project and a draft design for Stage two. The latter would include the design and construction of the actual terminal. But DOT said in its notice that the Army Corps reversed course once it reviewed the initial application. Now the permitting agency wants all design information about both stages before moving forward. The move came a week before DOT was set to host town halls about the project, which has sparked opposition from lawmakers, local officials and community members in Haines, Skagway and Juneau. Critics say the new terminal would complicate rather than ease regional travel. DOT said it will hold public meetings at a later date. Well, the army has quietly scrapped a plan to replace Fort Wainwright's old coal fired heat and power plant. Army officials decided in 2022 to replace the nearly 70 year old facility, but they terminated that plan six months ago to comply with an executive order issued last year by President Donald Trump. KUAC's Tim Ellis reports.
- [14:28]
Tim Ellis
Army officials determined about seven years ago that they needed to do something to replace or upgrade Fort Wainwright's increasingly undependable and inefficient coal fired central heat and power plant. The facility was completed in 1955 and is one of the country's oldest power plants still in operation, hanging on more than 30 years longer than it was designed to last.
- [14:54]
Rod Morrison
The ammunition here is at some risk with a single source of heat that is that old and a distribution system that much of it's that old as well.
- [15:04]
Tim Ellis
Stephen Stringham was a former chief of Fort Wainwright's utilities privatization and maintenance division. In 2019, he talked with KUAC about his concerns over a series of problems at the plant, including a couple of fires that broke out earlier that year. Another problem was excessive emissions that required the contractor, Fairbanks based Doyon Utilities, to reduce the plant's level of generation and also blackouts like the one in December 2018 that lasted for hours.
- [15:36]
Rod Morrison
We had a complete power failure and the installation was without power for several hours.
- [15:44]
Tim Ellis
Army officials said in 2022 that despite Doyon paying $70 million in upgrades and repairs, the plant and steam heat system have experienced several separate near catastrophic failures, most of which have halted the plant's ability to generate electricity or provide steam, end quote. Stringham says the problem served as a sort of wake up call on the need to fix the problems.
- [16:11]
Rod Morrison
20 megawatt plant with older equipment it's going to break down. It's going to break down when you least want it, to break down when you most need it.
- [16:22]
Tim Ellis
The power plant also had problems meeting regulatory requirements. In 2018, Post officials directed Doyon Utilities to run the plant at no more than 80% capacity because its carbon monoxide emissions were exceeding federal limits that required running the plant to less efficiently. Army officials said in 2019 that continued reliance on the plant's old technologies were increasing the cost of generating heat and power. They said that's why Fort Wainwright had one of the highest heating costs of any installation in the Army. That same year, the army launched an environmental impact statement process to study the situation and come up with solutions. After three years of public comment and analysis, the army in 2022 chose to build natural gas fired system to generate heat and to buy more power from Golden Valley Electric Association. Meanwhile, Doyon, the contractor and owner of the plant, continued operations. Virginia Supanek is the administrative manager for Doyon Utilities, and she said in an email response that the central heat and power plant has been updated substantially over the years and already meets the executive order's objectives of reliability and fuel security and mission assurance for Fort Wainwright, end quote. On January 27, 2025, the army decided to revisit the heat and power plant issue and began work on a supplemental environmental impact statement. That was one week after President Trump issued an executive order titled Unleashing America's Energy that promoted greater use of fossil fuels. Today we're taking historic action to help American workers, miners, families and consumers. We're ending Joe Biden's war on beautiful clean coal once and for all. That's Trump in an April 2025 ceremony at the White House, attended by a room full of coal workers and other invited guests. I call it beautiful clean coal. I tell my people never use the word coal unless you put beautiful clean before it. So we call it beautiful clean coal. David Goldunzoff is the director of Environmental Quality for the Assistant Secretary of the army for Installations, Energy and Environment. He said in an email that the army reviewed its earlier decision to replace the old heat and power plant in response to Trump's executive order, and he said the review is being done in consideration of current requirements and technologies as well as the future availability of resources, including natural gas. In Delta Junction, I'm Tim Ellis.
- [19:11]
Casey Grove
An international ski competition returned to Haines last week for the first time in nearly a decade. Organizers shifted to the event two full days earlier than planned to take advantage of a short period of clear skies as Avery Elfelt reports for the Alaska Dusk. Those involved say the move was well worth the logistical chaos and are already talking about coming back next year.
- [19:37]
Avery Elfeldt
About two dozen people are gathered at a bar in downtown Haines. It's before noon on a weekday, and they're glued to the live stream of an international sporting event taking place in their own backyard. High up in the mountains north of town, elite backcountry skiers and snowboarders are competing in the penultimate stop of the Freeride World Tour. It's only accessible by helicopter, but is live streamed around the globe. The bar oohs and ahs as riders pick their way down a near vertical mountain face.
- [20:06]
Eric Stone
Oh, what a recovery there for Ben Richards.
- [20:09]
Avery Elfeldt
Taking a similar local Sherry Loomis laughs as she scrolls through a note on her phone. She's written down a list of quirky ski terms she's learned over the course of the day.
- [20:19]
Eric Stone
Look at all of these.
- [20:21]
Avery Elfeldt
A tapestry of fluff. The whole mountain is a tapestry of fluff. They're lacing it. The bomb hole. That's where somebody else has crashed and you go into it.
- [20:34]
Eric Stone
The bomb hole.
- [20:36]
Avery Elfeldt
The watch party kicked off a weekend of celebration in town. The Haines event was just one among a handful of stops around the world and the only in the US at each competition, athletes ride down massive, ungroomed mountains, earning points for their line control, fluidity and style. Typically, the competition happens at some point during a weather window, which means the whole thing can last anywhere from a few days to more than a week. The Haines event was ultimately pushed two days earlier than anticipated due to a short snap of perfect weather. Reva Hilton is the Haynes tourism director.
- [21:09]
Eric Stone
So funny because we had planned for there to be a delay and then
- [21:14]
Casey Grove
for it to be early.
- [21:15]
Eric Stone
That is the one thing that none of us foresaw at all. And so we have just been in scramble mode for days.
- [21:25]
Avery Elfeldt
The change posed additional challenges for the already complicated event, which brought more than 100 people to the small, remote town and required a $100,000 local investment. Those challenges included booking last minute flights to get everyone in on time. The athletes also had significantly less time to prepare than normal. That's what Australian snowboarder Michaela Davis Meehan said during a local event, welcoming Freeride to the Chilkat Valley.
- [21:52]
Michaela Davis Meehan
Yeah, usually the day before we'll have like face check. So we go and look at it from below and with the binocs and then we study our lines overnight and then the next day do the comp. But this time we got the pictures and yeah had a look this morning and then straight back, straight up to it.
- [22:08]
Avery Elfeldt
Davis Meehan says her run in Haines wasn't her best. Still, she was among those who said Haines lived up to its Reputation of being the so called dream stop.
- [22:18]
Michaela Davis Meehan
Just riding Alaska is amazing to be here and I hope we get to come back.
- [22:23]
Avery Elfeldt
Athlete Mia Jones is from Truckee, California. She won the women's snowboard competition despite it being her first year on the tour. She was similarly in awe.
- [22:32]
Alex Solomon
Dude, the mountains are so incredible. I like was so mind blown and the snow was amazing and just like seeing the spines, it's unlike anything I've ever seen.
- [22:41]
Avery Elfeldt
Nicholas Hale woods is the CEO of Freeride One World Tour. He says moving up the competition took a lot of work and collaboration, but the conditions were worth it.
- [22:50]
Casey Grove
Riders who rode yesterday and even today were for most of them saying they had one of their best, if not the best day of skiing of their lives. And these guys are on skis 150 days a year.
- [23:04]
Avery Elfeldt
Asked whether the tour would return next year, Halewood says that's the hope.
- [23:08]
Casey Grove
When we organize an event, it's because we believe that the event has a long term viability. You don't do this work just for one off.
- [23:20]
Avery Elfeldt
That, he acknowledges, will depend in part on whether Haynes is willing and able to invest again next year. Reporting in Haines, I'm Avery Elfeldt.
- [23:30]
Casey Grove
The Iditarod crowned its Rookie of the Year in the early morning hours today. The award goes to the fastest first timer to complete the thousand mile trail. To nomenclature. This year, the top Iditarod rookie is an indigenous and international musher. Kom's. Ben Townsend has more. Ladies and gentlemen, this will be our Rookie of the Year.
- [23:50]
Ben Townsend
As Jesse Terry and his team of a dozen dogs barrel down front street in Nome, his headlamp swings left and right, scanning the small crowd assembled under the race's burled arch finish line. As he approaches, Terry's eyes lock onto his wife's. He stomps on his drag brake, kicks his snow hooks into the powdery ground and goes straight to her, briefly stopping to pet his dogs along the way.
- [24:12]
Jesse Terry
I've just been missing her and I've been calling her at checkpoints and it's just really, really special to share my life with her and see her again.
- [24:22]
Ben Townsend
The nearly 1,000 miles of trail between the races, official start in Willow and the finish in Nome is known for its challenges. The Topcock Blowhole, about 50 miles east of Nome has a reputation for disrupting races. Terry says his sled blew over several times in the notoriously windy corridor, but his 12 dogs forged forward.
- [24:42]
Jesse Terry
They just kept charging and then it was just the cycle of energy of them. I'm seeing them perform and Excel. And then it got me excited and then they knew I was excited and they just kept going.
- [24:54]
Ben Townsend
With fellow rookie Sam Martin trailing by just under an hour, the dog team's tenacity proved invaluable. Terry set off from White Mountain late Wednesday afternoon and made it to the safety checkpoint just after midnight. He spent just nine minutes in the final checkpoint of the race before setting out in complete darkness to the finish line. Terry is one of three indigenous rookies in this year's race. He is an Anishinaabe and calls Sioux Lookout, Ontario home. While it was his first time in Nome, he's been to Alaska before. Last year, he placed third in the Yukon Quest 450 sled dog race. The win gave him confidence that his team could return to Alaska this time for the state's longest race.
- [25:36]
Jesse Terry
And I think that I had a team of dogs that was capable of it. So the idea of showing them and showing us what they're capable of and I think that rookie of the year was definitely possible for them.
- [25:49]
Ben Townsend
Terry's wife, Mary England, doles out stake to the team. She admits they flew in with them after seeing the prices in Nome. The two reunite with their lead dogs at the end of the finished shoot for a traditional photo. Smiling ear to ear, Terry puts one arm around his lead dog, Jitterbug, and the other around his wife.
- [26:07]
Jesse Terry
Most of these dogs we raised and so to see them perform and do what they do and have her here is really special.
- [26:16]
Ben Townsend
Terry finished with a time of 10 days, 13 hours and 36 minutes. Reporting in Nome, I'm Ben Townsend.
- [26:33]
Casey Grove
And that's all for this edition of Alaska News Nightly. If you missed any of tonight's stories, we're online@alaskapublic.org and wherever you get your podcasts. We had reports tonight from Eric Stone and Alex Solomon in Juneau, Sophia, Stuart Rossi in Unalaska, Avery Elphelt and Haynes, Tim Ellis in Delta Junction and Ben Townsend in Nome. If you want to send us a news tip, question or comment, email us@newsalaskapublic.org Our audio engineers, Crystal Hyde. Kirsten Dobrath is our producer and I'm Casey Grove. Good night.