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- [00:00]
Rick Dormer
Support for Alaska Public Media on Demand comes from Siri, an Alaska Native corporation with operations and investments spanning five continents, 45 states and two US territories. Every school needs quality leadership and quality teachers, and Alaska is losing their educational leaders at a very rapid rate.
- [00:26]
Wesley Early
A school principal pleads with state lawmakers to increase base student funding from Alaska Public Media. This is statewide news on Alaska News nightly for Wednesday, April 2nd. Good evening. I'm Wesley Early. Also tonight, lawmakers approve a new screening policy at the state capitol.
- [00:40]
Reporter/Correspondent
There are regular risks of threats of violence. Political atmosphere is very charged.
- [00:46]
Wesley Early
Those stories and more tonight on Alaska News Nightly. Ketchikan is currently facing a controversial restructuring of the island's elementary schools. And in recent weeks, multiple school board members and the district superintendent have resigned. The principal of Ketchikan High School joined other school district officials from across the state to testify in front of the Alaska House and Senate on Monday. He was there to tell lawmakers that the kids are not alright. KBD's Jack Darrell has more and a content warning. This story talks about suicide and might be disturbing for some listeners.
- [01:27]
Jack Darrell
Rick Dormer is the principal of Ketchikan High School. He also leads the statewide association for high school principals.
- [01:33]
Rick Dormer
Every school needs quality leadership and quality teachers, and Alaska's losing their educational leaders at a very rapid rate.
- [01:39]
Jack Darrell
He was speaking at a joint hearing of the state House and Senate their education committees.
- [01:45]
Rick Dormer
We are trending the wrong direction.
- [01:47]
Jack Darrell
Dormer was one of a handful of officials and association heads from school districts like the Kenai Peninsula, Anchorage and Galena, plus the director of the Alaska Educator Retention and Recruitment Center. The testimony comes as lawmakers are deciding how much the state is going to put towards education funding next school year. For years now, Alaska schools have faced stagnant state funding, rising costs and budget uncertainty. Many, nearly all, have had to cut back resources. And Ketchikan is in the process right now of restructuring the island's elementary schools and combining some classes to help reduce the budget deficit. The plan at every stage has been met with protests and community members have even put together their own alternative plans to cut staff and combine facilities that they think would be lower impact. But it's not just facilities being affected. Dormer says schools need resources for students, mental health.
- [02:43]
Rick Dormer
Unfortunately, I can come to you and tell you that just the last month Ketchikan lost a teen by suicide and we had another teen attempt to take their life. Was life flighted out via suicide? They're going to be okay. It's just so real and it's right.
- [02:56]
Jack Darrell
In Front of US Alaska leads the nation in teen suicides, according to data from the U.S. department of Justice. Dormer says that roughly 40% of K high students have reported feeling so anxious, tense, scared every day for two weeks in a row that they couldn't finish their work, so sad or hopeless that they didn't want to do the things they normally like doing.
- [03:19]
Reporter/Correspondent
And.
- [03:19]
Rick Dormer
And we also believe these statistics are consistent across the state.
- [03:22]
Jack Darrell
K High has a social worker on staff to help students navigate the depression minefield of being a high schooler. The position's funded by a federal grant.
- [03:31]
Rick Dormer
That's for over 500 students. We have one social worker.
- [03:34]
Jack Darrell
The national association for School Social Workers generally recommends schools have at least one social worker for every 250 students. Dormer says most schools in Alaska can't afford that. They can't afford to hire counselors or social workers right now at all. And they can't rely on federal grants.
- [03:52]
Rick Dormer
As a principal, I can tell you that hiring a counselor is about impossible at this time. And then if you have the funds in the first place, how can you find them and then how can you retain them?
- [04:02]
Jack Darrell
Retention came up a few times in Dormer's testimony. It was a big part of nearly every testimony during the joint session. Officials said Alaska has a problem keeping teachers and continuous budget uncertainties are compounding that. Like another testifier referenced University of Alaska Anchorage research showing that high turnover was costing districts an extra $20,000 per teacher to recruit, hire and train. And retaining administrators is also a problem. In a matter of weeks this spring, Ketchikan school board president, another school board member and the district superintendent resigned. Dormer came to Ketchikan in 2022 after over a decade leading the high school in Petersburg. But he said he's now actively interviewing for other jobs too, outside of Alaska, in Oregon.
- [04:47]
Rick Dormer
Because if I go to Oregon, I can get a defined benefit package. I can have higher wages, I can have a lower cost of living. And I don't have to take the time and expense to get on a Boeing jet to see my family. It is a challenge. We want to stay. I want to stay. But we are also highly educated professionals. We have personal goals, we have professional goals. And I can tell you that there are a lot of options out there.
- [05:06]
Jack Darrell
Dormer told lawmakers that Alaska's teens deserve high quality teachers and administrators, ones who want to stick around. There's a bill before the state Senate right now that would increase per student funding for Alaska schools by $1,000. It already passed the House if it makes it all the way through the Senate, it'll end up on governor Mike Dunleavy's desk in Ketchikan. I'm Jack Darrell.
- [05:29]
Wesley Early
If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988. Meanwhile, a group of education leaders from tribal organizations spoke Today at a U.S. senate hearing against the dissolution of the federal Department of Education and for protecting the programs that support Indigenous students. The hearing followed an executive order President Trump signed last month to close the department. Rosita Kahani Worl, the president of Sealaska Heritage Institute, was one of the witnesses at the hearing. Worl, who is Tlingquet, spoke about the challenges of Indigenous education and the persistent lack of funding as especially in Alaska given the state's fiscal situation. Despite these challenges, we can confidently state that through our culture based programs that we have integrated into schools with DOE funding, we have witnessed measurable educational achievement among Native students as well as improvements in their social and emotional well being. Others who spoke at the hearing said that funding is important for addressing high rates of suicide and sexual assault among Native students and experiences such as homelessness, foster care and substance abuse. Senator Lisa Murkowski co led the oversight hearing. She said that the department's programs helped the government fulfill its federal Indian Trust responsibility, a legal obligation to protect Indigenous people's rights and well being. Murkowski highlighted programs that fund tutoring, language initiatives and post secondary education opportunities for Native students. She also pointed to the Alaska Native Education Program that supports curricula and academic and cultural activities for Native kids.
- [07:02]
Avery Elfelt
We need to make progress on the.
- [07:04]
Wesley Early
Ground and we owe it to our.
- [07:06]
Avery Elfelt
Native kids across the country.
- [07:07]
Wesley Early
Murkowski said that one idea to work around the department closure would be to transfer the programs to other agencies and to administer funding through the states. However, Murkowski and several witnesses, including Worl with Sealaska Heritage Institute, pointed out that such a transition could be detrimental to tribal sovereignty and lead to additional bureaucratic hurdles and delays. And visitors to the Alaska State Capitol will soon have to go through a metal detector and have their belongings screened in an X ray machine. It's after lawmakers approved a new screening policy on Monday, and as Alaska Public Media's Eric Stone reports, not everybody's happy about the change after decades of open access to the seat of government in Juneau.
- [07:45]
Eric Stone
If you ask Representative Sarah Hannon, screening Capitol visitors just makes sense. After all, 37 other states already do it.
- [07:52]
Reporter/Correspondent
There are regular risks of threats of violence Political atmosphere is very charged in general.
- [08:00]
Eric Stone
The new policy was Approved in a 9 to 4 vote and Hannon, a Juno Democrat, says it's something that's been on lawmakers minds years. She chairs the Legislative Council, that's a joint House and Senate committee that makes decisions about the day to day business of running the Capitol complex here in downtown Juneau.
- [08:16]
Reporter/Correspondent
I don't believe we can wait until we have an incident where someone is harmed or a weapon is drawn before we take action to make the building safe and accessible for anyone who wants to come in.
- [08:28]
Eric Stone
She points to things like the January 6th attack on the US Capitol as evidence of the need to beef up security. Opponents of the new policy, meanwhile, say it makes the Capitol less accessible to the Alaskans. Lawmakers are elected to represent Big Lake Republican representative Kevin McCabe, who as it happens is a longtime airline pilot, says he doesn't mind going through security.
- [08:47]
Reporter/Correspondent
But at the end of the day, I represent my constituents and they told me very clearly last summer that they didn't think that we should lock up the people's capital like that.
- [08:58]
Eric Stone
McCabe isn't on the decision making committee this time around, but he opposed it while vice chair of the council last year. Though it's a minority of the 13 member council, the opposition crosses party and caucus lines. Fairbanks Democratic Representative Ashley Carrick says she's not so sure it's needed.
- [09:12]
Reporter/Correspondent
We don't have an extraordinarily or unprecedented increase in security threats, and I again want to err on the side of keeping the Capitol as accessible as possible.
- [09:26]
Eric Stone
The head of the nonpartisan Legislative Affairs Agency says she expects screening to begin on April 14th at the earliest. Senator LV Gray Jackson chaired the Legislative Council last year when rejected a similar policy. The Anchorage Democrats supported adding a checkpoint, and she says the new screening policy is a perfectly reasonable way to balance accessibility and security.
- [09:46]
Reporter/Correspondent
Number one, it's going to take less than 30 seconds for people to walk through a metal detector, okay? And when it comes to folks not being able to get to Juneau, the good news is everything we do is broadcast. Everything.
- [10:00]
Eric Stone
But there's a certain magic to being in the room where it happens to steal a line from Lin Manuel Miranda. And some lawmakers think the added security measures will keep constituents away. That's the perspective of Representative Mike Prox. He's a Republican from North Pole who voted against the new policy.
- [10:15]
Reporter/Correspondent
I am willing to accept the risk of some crazy person coming in, disrupting things or beating somebody up. That's just me, because I think it is important to have a welcoming atmosphere at the state Capitol.
- [10:36]
Eric Stone
But at the same time, Prox says he gets it. It's not a risk everybody's willing to take. And he says it's important for the people who staff the Capitol building to feel safe at work. Reporting in Juneau, I'm Eric Stone.
- [10:50]
Wesley Early
Still to come on Alaska News Nightly Star Anchorage's iconic reindeer mascot is euthanized after a possible poisoning.
- [10:56]
Albert Whitehead
His health was so bad that he was not doing very well. He was suffering.
- [11:01]
Wesley Early
That's ahead. Stay with us. The University of Alaska Anchorage recently announced its restructuring how its Native Student Services program functions. But some Alaska Native students are protesting the change. They worry the program will become less responsive to their specific needs. Last month, UAA officials announced that starting July 1, the Native Student Services program will be renamed the Indigenous and Rural Student center and and combined with the Pride center and the Multicultural Student Services Program under one umbrella in the University's Community and Belonging Department. UAA Student Services Vice Chancellor Deanne Woodard made the announcement in a video to students.
- [11:40]
Jack Darrell
This reorganization process began at the beginning.
- [11:43]
Wesley Early
Of the fiscal year and aims to.
- [11:45]
Jack Darrell
Promote fiscal health and address staff capacity.
- [11:48]
Wesley Early
The program changes come as the wider University of Alaska has begun to phase out language around diversity, equity and inclusion. In response to federal pressure from the Trump, the university recently removed the term Alaska Native from its Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program website, where it's now referred to simply by its acronym, ancep. In an email, UA spokesman Austin Osborne said Native Student Services Program, or nss, used to report directly to Woodard as its own program rather than be grouped in with others. He says the changes were in the works before Trump took office and quote, student affairs leadership has been working diligently to address budget concerns and identify all possible ways to ensure fiscal health for the entire division, end quote. The move has drawn concerns from students like Native Student Council President Ria Larson. Larson is Yupik with family, originally from the Yukon Kuskokwim village of Nunapachuc.
- [12:40]
Ria Larson
This means that NSS is not going to have its own funding or budget. Someone else outside of NSS gets the final say, which means there's no self determination for the Native staff or students here.
- [12:54]
Wesley Early
Larson is one of over a thousand people who've signed an online petition asking for NSS to remain independent. She says staff with the are very responsive, reaching out directly to Alaska Native students to help get them signed up for classes and assist with other needs.
- [13:08]
Ria Larson
The guidance is a lot better because they understand where Native students are coming from and how because of our backgrounds. It's a little bit it's different for us coming into university than it is for other students, she says.
- [13:30]
Wesley Early
The NSS program also facilitates traditional activities like beating and subsistence programs and brings in community tribal partners. Larson says information has been scarce since the NSS restructuring announcement. A letter she and others have been circulating to NSS students asserts that the current head of the program, Assistant Director Valerie Svankara, has been put on administrative leave, leaving the program with one staff member. Right now, Larson says that comes at an inconvenient time when students are registering for classes.
- [13:59]
Ria Larson
They have back to back appointments every time registration comes along. So I can't imagine like what it's going to be like now with just one staff member.
- [14:09]
Wesley Early
The letter being circulated by Larson and others also claims that both staff members of the NSS program will be laid off in June. Osborne with UAA declined to comment on the status of NSS staff, citing HR privacy policies. An automated email response from Svankara stated that she was out of the office quote from March 26th until further notice. Advocates of the NSS program are organizing a protest scheduled for Thursday at 1:30pm in front of UAA's Consortium Library. Two Anchorage assembly incumbents are poised to retain their seats according to preliminary election results from Tuesday night. With about 39,000 ballots counted, the two incumbents up for re election, North Anchorage's Daniel Voland and West Anchorage's Cameron Perez Verdilla, are holding comfortable leads over their challengers despite a roughly 17 point lead over his closest opponent. Volund says he's not declaring victory just yet, but he's thankful for the support he's received.
- [15:12]
Reporter/Correspondent
Gratitude for my supporters, volunteers, people who contributed and people who believe in the work that I've been doing.
- [15:21]
Wesley Early
Meanwhile, four new faces will join the body after three incumbents decided against running for reelection and a fourth was moved out of his district. The assembly has maintained a center left majority in recent years and newcomer Jared Gerker is poised to represent Chugiak and Eagle river as one of a few conservatives on the body. And however, Gurker says he's looking forward to forming relationships with the assembly members and working on the city's mostly nonpartisan work.
- [15:47]
Reporter/Correspondent
Yeah, it crosses party lines, right? We're talking about zoning, we're talking about permitting reform, we're talking about all that stuff, right? And that's not something that's strictly Republican or strictly Democrat.
- [15:56]
Wesley Early
Yarrow Silvers, Aaron Baldwin day and Keith McCormick are leading in their races to represent East Midtown and South Anchorage, respectively. Election officials will post additional results over the next two weeks, with results set to be certified on April 22. Meanwhile, Alaska's population as a whole has been inching upward over the last few years after a period of decline. But as Avery Elfelt reports for the Alaska Desk, the same can't be said if you zoom in on certain parts of the state, including Haines and Skagway.
- [16:28]
Avery Elfelt
Alaska has returned to a period of slow but steady population growth as births outpace deaths making up for migration out of the state. That's according to this month's report from the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development. David Howell is the state demographer. He says the statewide population has been trending higher since 2020, but that this year's increase was even larger.
- [16:47]
Reporter/Correspondent
Our net migration losses haven't been that big, and we've been able to make up for net migration losses with what we refer to as natural increase, which is just births outnumbering deaths.
- [16:57]
Avery Elfelt
Alaska as a whole saw a 0.3% population increase between 2023 and 2024. That's up slightly on average since 2020. Howell attributes the bulk of that growth to one area.
- [17:07]
Reporter/Correspondent
All the growth since 2020 has pretty much been on that rail belt running, you know, from Kenai up through Fairbanks with the Matt to kind of being our one standout area that's grown consistently for decades now.
- [17:20]
Avery Elfelt
It comes in sharp contrast to other regions, including western Alaska and Southeast. The population of every borough in Southeast, for instance, has declined over the last four years on average. Skagway specifically has seen its population drop by over 2% on average per year, the largest decrease region wide. Howell says Skagway has yet to recover from the pandemic, which hit the borough's tourism dependent economy especially hard, and limited migration. But the decline in Southeast generally, he says, is largely due to its quickly aging population.
- [17:49]
Reporter/Correspondent
There's not as many people at high fertility ages, and you have more people at these ages where mortality is higher. And in fact, Skagway actually has a natural decrease, so deaths have actually outnumbered births in Skagway.
- [18:02]
Avery Elfelt
Meanwhile, in Haines, Alaska's oldest borough, the population has dropped between 1 and 2% on average each year. Local officials say it's becoming increasingly difficult to attract younger families to the area due to insufficient housing and childcare. Haines Mayor Tom Morfitt raised the issue during a recent meeting of the Haines Planning Commission. The commission has been working on an ordinance that would aim to create more housing in town by making it easier for homeowners to build auxiliary dwelling units on their properties.
- [18:28]
Jack Darrell
The housing crisis in this town is extreme. We cannot keep teachers.
- [18:33]
Reporter/Correspondent
We cannot attract new employees.
- [18:35]
Avery Elfelt
It's a different story in western Alaska, which has also seen population decline over the same time, says Howell, the state demographer there. The population is much younger but decreasing as people move away to find work in other parts of the state or the lower 48 in Haines. I'm Avery Elphelt.
- [18:54]
Wesley Early
Starr, an iconic reindeer who lived in downtown Anchorage, died Tuesday, weeks after he was possibly poisoned. Starr was the seventh reindeer to live at the corner of 10th Avenue and Ice Street. Starr was euthanized Tuesday. According to his owner, Albert Whitehead.
- [19:08]
Albert Whitehead
His health was so bad that he he was not doing very well. He was suffering.
- [19:12]
Wesley Early
Starr was a male reindeer who would have been eight next month, Whitehead says. On average, reindeer live around 15 years. Starr was the target of several alleged crimes earlier this year. In February, Whitehead says he caught someone spraying an unknown substance in a star's face, and he later developed pneumonia. He says he thought Starr was recovering, but things took a turn.
- [19:32]
Albert Whitehead
Suddenly he relapsed and some other issues developed. So I really don't know what caused him to die. The vets now are going through a during narcopsy with him and we won't have a result of that for a couple weeks.
- [19:45]
Wesley Early
Starr was rescued from the reindeer farm in Palmer. Having a reindeer living in downtown Anchorage is part of a longtime tradition started by a couple, Ivan and Oro Stewart, in the 1960s. When asked if the tradition would continue with an eighth reindeer, Whitehead said, it's.
- [19:59]
Albert Whitehead
A tough question under the current situation, would you be willing to put another animal into that enclosure, knowing there's somebody out there that has doing this kind of stuff to him?
- [20:08]
Wesley Early
Whitehead called the reindeer Star number seven. All of the reindeer before him were females. Meanwhile, the Chamai Dance Festival in Bethel is both a celebration of the vibrant state of Alaska Native dance and a nod to the people throughout history who've kept it alive against great odds. As KYUK's Evan Erickson reports, this year the festival chose to honor a late elder from a monarch who embodied this spirit.
- [20:39]
Evan Erickson
In the 1988 festival. In the film Drums of Winter, Jagytnak Stanley Waska holds a small child in his arms as he sits in his kitchen in the Yukon Delta community of Emonik. Singing in Yup', Ik, he taps his foot to the beat in place of the typical beat of a jayak frame drum inside the kazkik, the communal house and spiritual center of the village. The film follows Waska as he leads dances and tells stories that have survived through the centuries, through disease, famine and the forces of cultural assimilation. As Waska says in the film, on good nights, on some evenings, the drummers and singers are at their sharpest. Everything is together and right on key. Those nights make you want to dance from way inside, to sing from way inside. The majority of Drums of Winter was shot in a monarch in 1977. Since its release, it has racked up awards across the world and established itself as an authentic portrait of Yupik dance and potlatch tradition on the Yukon Delta. The film was screened at this year's Chamai Dance Festival in Bethel, which was also dedicated to Waska, who died in 1986. Today, both the culture of sharing and dance tradition remain strong and mnemonic. Waska's son Raymond leads the community's dance group, made up of the direct descendants of many who appear in the film. In shooting Drums of Winter, filmmakers Sarah Elder and Leonard Camerling wanted to break new ground using a collaborative community approach. It steered clear of narrative voiceover and gave the film subjects a direct say in the production process. Part of this collaboration meant bringing on Stanley Waska's nephew, Walkie Charles, to work with, translating and interpreting film footage at this year's Chamay Festival. Charles hosted the film screenings and offered context about the outsiders who sought to capture daily life in Amonic.
- [22:35]
Walkie Charles
These two folks were Kasak, and yet they came in silently and said nothing but recorded.
- [22:44]
Evan Erickson
Charles grew up in Emonik and is now a professor of Yupik language at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He says his ties to his community's rich dance tradition were severed at the age of 12, when he was sent far away for schooling at the Wrangel Institute in Southeast When I should have.
- [23:00]
Walkie Charles
Learned I was taken away to boarding school instead of coming home after boarding school I went to college. I wanted to give back to my people through English the story that they themselves cannot express.
- [23:16]
Evan Erickson
Charles says he fondly remembers weeks spent on the mouth of the Yukon river with his uncle at fish camp. He says there was nothing pretentious about his uncle, despite his status as a community leader.
- [23:27]
Walkie Charles
He grew up with very, very humble beginnings, and he died humbly. And what kept him to be the person that he is is that he had that spiritual connection between the new and the old.
- [23:43]
Evan Erickson
Waska was also a longtime Catholic deacon, and Drums of Winter is peppered with the historical writings of early Jesuit missionaries who called the foundations of Yupik belief into question. After arriving in western Alaska in the late 1800s. Some of the passages in the film are shocking in their scorn. In an Excerpt written in 1894, one priest describes a famine that struck a mission near modern day St. Mary's on the lower Yukon River.
- [24:09]
Wesley Early
I consider the starvation as a blessing.
- [24:11]
Reporter/Correspondent
Of God for the mission. The help I am obliged to give will be remembered.
- [24:17]
Wesley Early
Calamities have always been a special time of grace and the means to obtain conversion of sinners.
- [24:23]
Evan Erickson
Despite this dark history, Charles remembers his uncle as both a culture bearer and a devout Catholic.
- [24:29]
Walkie Charles
He prayed and prayed and prayed all the time, and there are times when at night we'd be so tired and yet he wanted to pray.
- [24:39]
Evan Erickson
Watching Drums of Winter, one gets the sense that just as often Waska's mind was in the Kazkik thinking about Jurassic. As Waska explains at the end of the film, I don't enjoy other things like movies, white people's dances, basketball games or bingo. Even if they have Yupik dancing day after day, I don't think I will ever get tired of it. I came into my awareness with this dancing. I grew into consciousness with it. Just like the Kazkak scene in the film. Many Yubik traditions have faded into the past. But were he alive today at the Chamai Dance Festival dedicated to his memory, Waska might be proud to know that there are many who will also never tire of dancing in Bethel. I'm Evan Erickson.
- [25:45]
Wesley Early
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 Jack Darrell and Ketchikan, Alena Knightsen and Ava White in Anchorage, Eric Stone in Juneau, Avery Elphelt in Haines and Evan Erickson in Bethel. If you want to send us a news tip, question or comment, email us@newslaskapublic.org Our audio engineers, Chris Hyde, Annie Feit helped produce tonight's show and I'm Wesley Early. Good night. This is statewide news on Alaska Public Media.