Category: Alaska News

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Alaska superintendents, principals and school officials delivered sobering testimony to lawmakers at the Alaska State Capitol last week. They painted a picture of schools struggling to continue to support teachers and students amid budget shortfalls, cuts to programs, teacher shortages, rising costs and increased facility maintenance needs. 

Lisa Parady, director of the Alaska Council of School Administrators, the non-profit advocacy and leadership organization that organized the annual fly-in event, said the group is concerned for all the state’s children.

“There’s no room for division,” she said, noting that there are often divides between the needs of urban and rural districts, or districts that are on the road system versus off the road system. “All those need to fall to the wayside when we’re talking about the best interest for our children in Alaska.”

School officials from across the state addressed a joint session of the House and Senate Education Committees on Mar. 30, and presented lawmakers with a list of legislative priorities and challenges for Alaska’s 53 districts and roughly 130,000 students. 

Despite a historic raise in per student funding, known as the base student allocation, last year, officials say state funding still does not meet districts’ needs to hire and retain teachers, provide services and programs to students and keep up with maintaining aging school facilities. 

To match the pace of inflation since 2011, school administrators said it would require the state to increase funding  to the BSA by $1,283. Additionally, they highlighted student transportation costs have exceeded state funding by an estimated $65.5 million. 

Several bills are currently being debated in the Legislature that would increase education funding, and a joint legislative task force on education funding is examining long term challenges with recommendations due in 2027. 

High teacher turnover 

School leaders’ presentation to lawmakers included research, data and testimony illustrating what the group described as converging crises faced by Alaska schools: teacher shortages, insufficient state funding and budget shortfalls and a growing number of students with disabilities needing special education services. 

David Nogg, principal of Goldenview Middle School in Anchorage, highlighted how teacher shortages impact student achievement there. 

“High teacher turnover is directly correlated with poor student achievement, and our children are suffering, unfortunately,” said Nogg, who is also president of the Alaska Association of Secondary School Principals, housed within ACSA.

While teacher turnover has been historically high in rural and remote districts, teacher turnover was 30% in urban districts as well, according to 2024 data from the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Institute of Social and Economic Research. 

Nogg pointed to ISER research that found that in the five districts with the lowest teacher turnover, average student proficiency in reading was roughly 85%, while among the five districts with the highest teacher turnover, the average number of students with reading proficiency was roughly 47%. 

“An urgent response is needed to address the dire vacancy rates and the need for in-person educators and support personnel across Alaskan schools,” Nogg said.

Researchers estimated the average cost of teacher turnover was $27,000 per teacher, and approximately $75,000 per principal.  

“Only one out of every four principals are in the same building after five years,” he said. “This high turnover rate of building principals is costly in dollars, time, relationships and most importantly, the impact on student learning.”

Nogg said his list of responsibilities has grown from managing students, staff and facilities to include additional duties like standing in as school nurse, an experience shared by principals across the state. He said many teachers and school leaders are stretched so thin they’re leaving the state. 

According to a survey by ACSA of teachers on their reasons for leaving in Alaska, the No. 1 reason cited was the lack of a defined benefit retirement plan, followed by better job opportunities in other states, high cost of living in Alaska, and uncertainty of education funding.

The group said legislative action to establish and fund a public pension system, with competitive salary and benefits for educators would help retain teachers. 

In the meantime, ACSA has created several programs to help districts, teachers and staff with training, professional development and mentorship throughout the state, including the Alaska Staff Development Network and the Alaska School Leadership Academy. 

The Alaska Educator Recruitment and Retention Center, also a division of the ACSA, is continuing efforts to support hiring and retention of teachers, said director Jennifer Schmitz, like hosting in-person and virtual job fairs, and marketing campaigns. But there are serious challenges.

“Those are big turnover numbers that we’re looking at,” Schmitz said. “We had 345 positions that were not filled on the first day of school this year.”

There are nearly 600 international teachers working across Alaska districts this year. But with a steep visa fee for the H-1B visa program levied by the Trump administration this year, as well as new restrictions on J-1 visa placements, many districts can’t hire more international teachers, Schmitz said. “So that’s really out of reach for us right now, so we’re working through that with our immigration attorney and helping support districts and finding even finding international teachers who are already in the country, and trying to get them to Alaska.”

Schmitz noted that many international teachers are hired for their expertise in special education. 

A ‘vacancy tax’ for special education

The number of students in need of special education services is growing, and school districts are struggling to meet the demand, lawmakers heard. 

Melissa Matthews, director of student services for the Bering Strait School District and president of Alaska Council of Administrators of Special Education, said districts are hiring contract staff for special education services, at higher costs, which she called a “vacancy tax.”

“We are spending more on work arounds, travel, contracted itinerant staff and temporary staffing than we would on a stable, permanent workforce across Alaska. Districts are doing everything they can to uphold the civil rights of students with disabilities, but we are stretched thin,” she said.

“We need the tools to move forward from simply surviving to truly educating, because an Alaskan student’s civil rights should never depend on whether a district can find a teacher or budget constraints,” she said.

There are nearly 200 vacant special education positions across the state, according to ASCA data, Matthews said. 

“These are not optional roles. They are federally required,” she said. “Within the state, we are starting to see schools without a resident special education teacher at all, relying on itinerant staff who fly or commute between sites to supervise and train paraprofessionals who will be providing the specialized services to the student. This increases costs and stretches staff to their limits.” 

“It is not a model designed for student success. It is a survival strategy,” she added. 

Matthews said since 2021, in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic, ASCA data shows Alaska has seen a 14% increase in the number of students with disabilities, requiring special education services. 

She said that districts have to shoulder the legal obligation to meet those students’ needs, which can require increased staff because certain students’ needs require one-on-one settings.

Matthews said districts are also seeing an increase in students entering kindergarten with developmental delays, and urged the state to invest in infant learning programs and early education services to help address those delays and reduce the intensity of special education services required in later years. 

Lawmakers passed increased funding for infant learning programs last year, but it was vetoed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy. 

‘Budget slasher in chief’

Randy Trani is the superintendent of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District, which is facing a projected $23 million budget deficit and planning to close three elementary schools this year. He emphasized the state’s obligation under the Alaska Constitution to fund public education and said districts need predictable funding so educators can focus on student achievement. 

He urged lawmakers to increase funding for the BSA and for deferred maintenance of school facilities, where the current statewide backlog is estimated at $535 million. 

He said managing turnover and dwindling budgets is taking a toll on superintendents — where they would be focused on academics and school improvements, he said they’re now focused on budget cuts.

“Instead of being the academic leader in chief, we’re now the budget slasher in chief,” he said.

Trani showed lawmakers a slide of Alaska superintendents’ responses to the question of what keeps them up at night. The top three responses were budgets, school facilities, staff capacity, and “wrapping up my current job and preparing for the next job.”

“What’s on our mind, collectively, is budget and money, and you don’t see anything here about academic achievement, and that crushes people. It crushes our leaders,” he said.

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President Donald Trump’s administration listed fewer vulnerable species for protection than any other presidential administration since Congress passed the Endangered Species Act.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Trump’s first term added 22 species to the 1,700-species list. So far in his second term, zero new species have made the list. That’s according to a database maintained by the nonprofit conservation group Center for Biological Diversity and an online database maintained by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Officials at the Fish and Wildlife Service, largely responsible for Endangered Species List considerations and enforcement, were unable to answer Capital Chronicle questions by Thursday evening.

Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said the numbers are not surprising. The group has been involved in a growing number of lawsuits against the administration for attempts to circumvent the act and for missing statutory deadlines for considering and listing species.

A backlog of roughly 400 species await a federal listing decision, Greenwald said.

“It’s consistent with what other Republican administrations have done, but this administration has just gone so much further in dismantling protections for endangered species,” he said.

On Tuesday, a group of six Trump appointees overseeing federal wildlife, agriculture and environment agencies voted unanimously to remove protections from species threatened by oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. That includes the Rice’s whale, of which there are only 51 left in the world, according to the most recent federal estimate. Conservation groups are suing.

It was only the fourth time since the Endangered Species Act Committee was created in 1978 that the so-called “God Squad” was convened to override federal species’ protections and determine the fate of imperiled species.

Trump last year threatened to invoke the committee’s review of species he said stand in the way of increased logging in federal forests in Oregon.

Greenwald said that the growing backlog of species being considered for listing is also due to a lack of funding for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and massive losses in staff.

The agency lost nearly 20% of its staff in the last year to buyouts, early retirements and other Trump administration policies meant to cut the federal workforce, according to records requested from Biological Diversity.

He said there’s not just an administrative backlog at the federal agencies, but a biological backlog of threatened species in the U.S. likely far greater than 1,700.

“Scientists recognize there are thousands of species that are imperiled in the U.S., and most of those, honestly, there’s just not very much information about. We need to do more study and survey,” he said. “When we get out of this administration, there’s going to be an even bigger backlog.”

Anyone can petition the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service to list a species that might be threatened or on the brink of extinction. By law, the agencies have 90 days to respond to the petition, one year to undertake research and gather findings about whether a listing is warranted or not and one more year to issue a final ruling.

Greenwald said in practice, step one typically takes a year, and steps two and three typically take four to five years each, meaning most species don’t actually get listed until 10 or more years after the request to protect them.

Groups including the Center for Biological Diversity have taken to suing the federal government over its missed deadlines for decades, and Greenwald said federal lawyers almost always settle by agreeing to meet deadlines both parties agree on. The group has been trying for more than a decade to get migratory monarch butterflies listed, which have had an 80% population decline since the late 1990s and sued the Trump administration in February when officials delayed a decision on listing the species that was supposed to be made in December.

Daniel Rohlf, a law professor and director of the Earthwise Law Center at Lewis & Clark University, said long delays in getting species listed isn’t uncommon, but the Trump administration in particular is doing “end-runs around the law.”

Besides declaring an emergency and convening the God Squad, Rohlf said administration officials have slowed down listings by leveraging part of the law that allows officials to categorize species as “warranted but precluded” for protections.

“That is the Fish and Wildlife Service saying: ‘Well, we should list the species as threatened or endangered, but we’re too busy with other higher priority species, so we can’t deal with this species right now,’” he said, describing it as a “purgatory” for species on the brink.

Rohlf and Oregon State University professor Christian Langpap, who studies natural resource economics and the economics of endangered species conservation, said research shows the Endangered Species Act works.

“Despite the controversy that the Endangered Species Act has always been surrounded in, and the conflicting arguments about the effectiveness, the science, empirical research and empirical evidence does seem to suggest that listing species and investing resources and effort in their recovery ultimately is effective,” Langpap said. “If you cut that process off the first step — the listing — then there is a huge opportunity cost.”

Langpap and Rohlf said staff and budget cuts at federal science agencies will make it harder to understand the impacts of species loss.

“It’s going to be hard for us to say what the impacts of not listing many of these species are, because the federal government is deliberately eliminating the science that tells us what’s going on in the world,” Rohlf said.

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The Alaska Senate last week advanced a bill that would allow for the anonymous surrendering of infants in so-called infant safety devices.

The boxes are located on the exteriors of buildings. They are climate controlled and monitored by video. When the device is opened, a 911 request is automatically made. 

Alaskans have been able to surrender infants since 2008. Newborns must be given directly to police officers, firefighters, doctors or other medical personnel. They are then turned over to the Alaska Office of Children Services for adoption. 

In Alaska, an infant must be aged 21 days or younger to be surrendered legally. 

North Pole Republican Sen. Robb Myers is the lead sponsor of Senate Bill 9. It would allow newborns to be surrendered in climate-controlled boxes, located outside police stations, fire departments, hospitals and other locations. 

Myers said that around one baby a year has been surrendered in Alaska since 2008. Despite that, three infants have been found abandoned in Alaska since 2013: Two were found dead; one newborn was discovered alive in Fairbanks in a box in winter.

Myers said safe surrender devices would help save lives. Parents can feel shame or the fear of potential recognition when giving a child to another person, he said. The climate-controlled boxes are intended to remove that barrier.

The Anchorage Fire Department, City of Fairbanks, the Alaska Children’s Trust and other groups support the legislative change.

The Alaska Senate advanced the bill on an 18-2 vote. Sens. Bert Stedman, a Sitka Republican, and Löki Tobin, an Anchorage Democrat, voted no.

Tobin said the anonymity of surrendering a child into a baby box could lead to abuse of women. She said the boxes introduce the potential that traffickers could surrender babies without a mother’s consent.

“The potential misuses for these devices far outweigh the benefits,” Tobin said.  

All 50 states allow for the surrendering of infants. Almost half of states allow for newborns to be surrendered in baby boxes, which has accelerated since Roe vs. Wade was overturned, particularly in Republican-led states. 

If the bill passes, the Alaska Department of Public Safety would be tasked with drafting regulations for the placement of infant safety devices. Each infant safety device is estimated to cost $16,000. That excludes surveillance and security costs, which state officials say could be “significant.”

SB 9 now advances to the House for its consideration. Similar legislation has been advancing through that legislative chamber.

SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE

One might expect the 51st Alaska Folk Festival to be a bit tamer than the landmark 50-year bash, but organizers say last year’s golden anniversary get-together set the stage for an even bigger week of music, dance and other activities this year.

“The 50th brought so many new members into the fold,” said Josh Fortenbery, president of the festival’s board, while he and others were setting up Centennial Hall on Sunday for shows starting Monday evening. “And so a lot of people that were excited about the thing last year — or maybe hadn’t been in a while, or never been before — all signed up as members last year. So we have the largest membership we’ve ever had. And so I think that allows us to keep building every year and make it keep getting bigger and better, without ever compromising the idea that it’s always going to be free.”

The festival opens at 6:30 p.m. Monday in the main Centennial Hall ballroom with a 15-minute set by the Juneau Community Chorus and is scheduled to close sometime after the 9 p.m. Sunday concert by featured guest performer Willi Carlisle with a traditional crowd singalong of “Goodnight Irene.” Other workshops and dance band events are scheduled during the week in Centennial Hall’s other rooms and the adjacent Juneau Arts and Culture Center, plus a variety of non-official and “after-hours” events at venues throughout downtown.

Among the new — or least not previously remembered — features at this year’s festival is a neon backdrop of a guitar and stars, a “50 Years of Folk Fest” that will be screened twice on Saturday at KTOO’s studios, and life-size puppets Carlisle is bringing with him as part of his act.

“We need two people to operate these backpack puppets,” said Annie Bartholomew, another festival board member and longtime Juneau musician. “I think it’s a raccoon and a king, and they fight each other.”

Carlisle, 36, who performed a 15-minute set during the 2019 festival, may also be the first person in such a slot who has returned as the festival’s guest artist, Bartholomew said.

Born in Kansas and now based in Arkansas, Carlisle performs “traditional folk music for 21st century problems,” according to a Grammy.com feature following the release of the second of his four current albums. His website proclaims “singing is healing” and “by singing together, he believes we can begin to reckon with the inevitability of human suffering and grow in love.”

Fortenberry said that kind of presence is what motivated the invitation from the festival’s board.

“I think just in the current sort of political climate — the feeling of sort of dread and civil unrest and disconnection — his joy and his model of trying to just bring everyone to the fold just really fits what we think we need sort of culturally right now,” Fortenberry said. “So it’s just a really apt pick for the times we live in.”

The rest of the lineup on the main stage features a multitude of well-known local musicians in 15-minute slots that, as usual, are fully booked with a long standby list (about 85 artists on Monday morning, according to the festival’s website).

This year’s poster was designed by Savannah LeCornu, a self-taught Ketchikan artist who is Tsimshian, Haida, and Nimiipuu (Nez Perce), according to the festival’s website. The poster features silhouetted musicians in a zig-zagging line of northern lights above Juneau’s nighttime cityscape.

Dance music is scheduled Thursday through Saturday evenings at the JACC, with four or five bands performing each night. This year’s feature dance band is The Red Hots, a quartet from North Carolina, with Connor Maguire serving as the featured guest caller for that band and some of the other dance performances.

Bartholomew said her banjo teacher, Riley Baugus, is a member of The Red Hots who has toured with musicians such as Willie Nelson and Alison Krauss.

“He’s a great teacher, and the guys he plays with are all really cool,” Bartholomew said. “It’ll be great getting him to dance and teaching people, and bringing in some authentic North Carolina, old-time dance Appalachian stuff.”

She said she’s also familiar with Maguire, having been to dances he’s called in California and Idaho.

“He looks like a lumberjack,” Bartholomew said. “I’m afraid he’ll move to Juneau because he’ll just fall in love with it. But he’s really boisterous and fun.”

Fortenbery said he was barely able to squeeze in the roughly 30 individuals or groups wanting to conduct workshops Saturday and Sunday. Offerings range from introductory sessions on music theory and square dance calling to applying for Rasmuson Foundation Individual Artist Awards, the latter being among the notable new additions.

“This is about the most workshop applications I’ve ever received,” he said.

This story was originally published by the Juneau Independent.

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Ketchikan is not getting a free, mile-long, 12-foot-diameter tunnel to link the community with its airport across the water.

The Ketchikan Gateway Borough had been one of 16 finalists for a national company’s offer to pay for building a tunnel but did not measure up in the final decision. The Boring Co. will be moving forward with projects in New Orleans, Baltimore and Dallas, selecting three winners rather than the original plan for a single winner of the Tunnel Vision Challenge.

The company, which was founded by Elon Musk, announced the contest winners in a late-night March 23 post on its X social media account.

Ketchikan’s 45-page entry, one of 487 submitted to the company, had proposed four options for tunnel access between Revillagigedo and Gravina islands, linking the town to the airport.

The company’s post on X said the next step for the three winners will be for The Boring Co. “and the project stakeholders (to) enter into a rigorous diligence process.” That will include meetings with “elected officials, regulators, community leaders and business leaders,” in addition to geotechnical borings and utility and subsurface infra investigation.

The company said it would pay 100% of the cost of the due-diligence effort, adding that it would build all three “if all three are feasible.” But, if only one of the tunnels is feasible, it would build just the one.

Ketchikan’s effort started in January, when Assembly Members Rodney Dial and Sharli Arntzen talked of addressing long-standing issues surrounding the aging ferry system between Revillagigedo and Gravina islands.

Dial discovered The Boring Co. contest that promised to finance and construct one mile of 12-foot diameter tunnel infrastructure for the winning project.

The interest in a hard link such as a bridge or tunnel across Tongass Narrows goes back decades. It increased with construction of the state-owned and borough-operated Ketchikan International Airport on Gravina Island in 1973.

Currently, borough-operated shuttle ferries serve the airport.

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Tickets to ride the Alaska Marine Highway System will go up a little more than 2% effective May 1, the first fare increase since 2019.

That 2019 increase instituted “dynamic pricing” of higher fares on popular routes, much like airlines and hotels price their rates to maximize revenues.

But dynamic pricing was not popular among ferry riders and the state rescinded the fare structure in 2022, leaving tickets unchanged since then.

Craig Tornga, marine director for the state ferry system, told legislators last month that it’s important for the marine highway to keep up with inflation.

The fare increase will raise the cost of a car and driver between Wrangell and Ketchikan by $6, from $213 to $219. A car and driver between Wrangell and Bellingham, Washington, will increase next month by $30, from $1,364 to $1,394.

The system’s operating budget for calendar 2026 is about $170 million, with almost half expected from the federal government and the rest from ticket sales and the general fund. The ferries have never paid their own way from the fare box, always needing state or federal dollars to cover the difference.

A new budget issue is that this year’s federal money is late, and the state may need to front tens of millions of dollars until the federal aid comes through. The Trump administration has delayed since last year opening the ferry funding program at the Federal Transit Administration to grant applications.

The ferry system has enough state money to cover its expenses into July, Dom Pannone, director of program management and administration, told the state Senate Transportation Committee on March 19.

The soonest the federal aid might come through is August or September, he told lawmakers, which would require the state to cover up to $30 million for two months until the federal check arrives.

Committee members asked Pannone how sure he was that the federal grant program would open soon enough for Alaska to receive the money by late summer or early fall, limiting the state’s risk. “We have high confidence,” he said, though he added “confidence can never be 100%.”

At the committee hearing, Tornga also briefed legislators on the ferry system’s ongoing efforts to recruit and retain more workers aboard the ships. The system has suffered from chronic crew shortages the past several years.

As of February, the ferries were short about 40 crew in licensed positions from full staffing of 336, he reported.

The state has embarked on several recruiting, training and scholarship programs to bring in more licensed crew, including investing in employees who want to attend maritime school to move up to more skilled positions.

“We want to promote our own employees to move up,” Tornga said.

In addition to dealing with crew shortages and delayed federal funding, the ferry system is managing an aging fleet.

Bids are due at the end of May for construction of a replacement ferry for the 62-year-old Tustumena, which serves Gulf of Alaska communities. The federally funded replacement had been estimated at more than $300 million, though Tornga declined to provide the Senate Transportation Committee with an updated number.

“I don’t want bidders to know,” he said. “It’s an expensive vessel.”

Until a new ship comes online, Tornga said they would try to keep the Tustumena out of rough storms that would twist the hull and risk damaging the welds that have accumulated over the years.

The Columbia, which serves Southeast Alaska, is almost as old, built in 1973. “We want to keep it going until we get a mainline replacement,” which could be eight or nine years, he told legislators.

Work will start next winter on a long list of repairs, rebuilds and maintenance aboard the Columbia, he said, starting with replacement of the “obsolete firefighting systems” and replacing leaky windows and rusted steel.

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