A decade of work on a hybrid electric boat propulsion project culminated Thursday as U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski shattered a bottle of champagne on the bow of the F/V Mirage, and saw it move under electric power along the dock at Sitka’s Gary Paxton Industrial Park.
Tradesmen worked at the industrial park over the past year to install the hybrid propulsion system on the Mirage, completing the first phase of a federally-funded Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association initiative to fit three boats with battery-electric motors.
F/V Mirage skipper Jeff Turner returned Wednesday night from the offshore black cod fishing grounds in order for Murkowski to tour the vessel during her brief visit to Sitka.
Turner is using his troll and longline fishery operations to break in his vessel’s new battery-electric motors.
“It runs nice and quiet the way it’s supposed to, and it’s powerful enough to haul black cod pots from 300 fathoms — 40-pot strings, over and over and over and over,” Turner told the Sentinel.
With the hybrid system, Turner can run to and from the fishing grounds using the boat’s diesel engine, and then switch to electric mode for trolling or longlining, or to cruise at slower speeds.
As Turner is learning the new technology and adjusting it to his vessel, he’s leaning on the technical expertise of energy scientist Chandler Kemp and electrician Ben Matthys, who spent years bringing the project to life.
“They’re my pacifiers,” Turner said. “When things go wrong, I text them pictures of what everything is doing. If I see an error message, I send it to them and they tell me ‘try this.’”
As Murkowski arrived at the industrial park Thursday, 28 people — tradesmen, three Mirage crewmen, ALFA staff and partners — gathered in a circle on the dock.
ALFA executive director Linda Behnken introduced Turner, Kemp, Matthys, marine electrician Dan Cooper and marine fabricator Jeremy Serka as members of the team that made the project a reality.
Serka, of Sitka Custom Marine, provided the shop space, materials and equipment needed for the project.
He helped rebuild Turner’s propulsion system and redesign the Mirage engine room, as well as the cabin, to make way for the battery-electric equipment.
“Everything got moved except for the generator and the freezer system,” Serka told the Sentinel. “It was a lot to do in a short amount of time.”
Serka said that the most exciting challenge came early this year, just before the team was scheduled to commission the vessel.
“We realized the engine showed up with the wrong flywheel — from the factory, they put in the wrong flywheel, so there was no starter we could get to actually engage that flywheel,” Serka said. “So we had to figure that out, and then pull apart the engine, get a new flywheel, replace it, you know, overnight, essentially, to make this work, and that was a big challenge.”
ALFA board member Terry Perensovich chimed in: “That’s the thing about cutting edge, all those problems get discovered so the next guy that does this will know what to anticipate.
“Henry Ford didn’t start with an assembly plant, right?” Perensovich said. “He was in the barn figuring out how to build a car.”
After meeting the team members, Murkowski asked Turner why he decided to make his boat available for hybrid-electric conversion.
Turner said he was initially drawn to the project to “be greener, maybe save money.”
Now that he’s fishing with the hybrid vessel, the absence of noise “is something I really notice,” Turner said. “A quiet boat is fatigue-free. You can talk in a normal voice, you don’t have to yell across the deck.”
Murkowski said that with the way fuel prices are going, Turner should feel good about pioneering the hybrid technology.
“Everyone’s going to be looking at you with ‘electric envy,’” she said.
Behnken noted that the team is preparing to install an all-electric inboard power system on the F/V Energizer, a Juneau gillnet boat that’s now in Serka’s shop.
Before christening the F/V Mirage by breaking a bottle of champagne, Matthys led Murkowski on an inspection tour of the hybrid vessel.
“I felt like a fish out of water,” Matthys said of his time in the engine room with the senator. “It was cool to discuss the challenges of fitting things in boats, and looking at opportunities to do this for the fleet. … We need U.S. manufacturing to have capacity to make these goodies, batteries, all of that.”
Kemp, an assistant professor of sustainable energy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Bristol Bay campus, traveled to Sitka for the christening Thursday.
He joined the ALFA project team in 2016, beginning by researching energy efficiency on boats. Ten years later, Kemp said it’s surprising to be showing a U.S. Senator a completed, hybrid-electric fishing vessel.
The success is due largely to fishermen who were invested in the project, and the professionals in Sitka who supported installation of the hybrid-electric system, Kemp said.
“I think the work that we’re doing now really lays the groundwork for if, in the future, folks did want to have an operation that was fully powered by renewable energy,” Kemp said. “So it’s really exciting to get to this point, and it’s interesting to think about what comes next.”
The 2026 Southeast harvest limit for king salmon is more than 50% higher than the limit for 2025. This year, Southeast Alaska fishermen can catch a total 205,300 treaty king salmon — fish that didn’t come from Alaska hatcheries — according to a March 31 announcement by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
State fishery managers use the harvest target for treaty kings to set catch limits for each gear type in sport and commercial fisheries.
This year’s harvest target for Southeast was calculated in accordance with the U.S.-Canada Pacific Salmon Treaty, which regulates fishing for migratory king (chinook) populations along the West Coast of both countries.
In 2025, due to poor forecasts for the migratory stocks that drive Southeast fisheries, the treaty limit hit a record low of 133,500. That represented a 40% cut from the 2024 Southeast limit of 211,400.
In recent years, the Southeast limit has ranged between a high of 355,600 kings in 2016 down to roughly 130,000 in both 2018 and 2025, Fish and Game records show.
Announcing the 2026 Southeast limit, Fish and Game reported that “several stocks have shown signs of improvement in 2024 and 2025.”
From this year’s harvest limit, commercial troll fishermen can take up to 146,000 kings, up substantially from the record-low 92,730 in 2025.
Trollers get to fish “50,000 more chinook than last year, with last year being the lowest allocation in history, so it’s better than terrible for the trollers this year,” said Patrick Baum, an Alaska Trollers Association board member.
Some trollers depend on the high-value kings for about 40% to 50% of their annual income, while facing ever-increasing prices for fuel, groceries and maintenance required to operate their vessels.
In early 2025, the Alaska Board of Fisheries changed the way the state divides the allocation between troll and sport by shifting 3% of the troll allocation to the sport sector each year, which added to trollers’ frustration about the low harvest limit last year.
For 2026, resident and nonresident sport anglers in Southeast can harvest 43,600 kings, the department announced.
That sport harvest limit is up from the record-low 27,700 allowed last year.
This year residents can harvest two kings, 28 inches or greater in length, each day, with no annual limit. The record-low treaty allocation in 2025 triggered a one-fish daily limit for residents, with no annual cap.
Nonresidents in 2026 can catch one king salmon, 28 inches or greater in length, each day. From Jan. 1 through June 30, nonresidents have an annual limit of three; from July 1 through Dec. 31, the nonresident annual limit is one.
Nonresidents in 2025 were bound to an unusually tight, year-round annual limit of one fish.
On March 31, the department also announced its annual closure of waters around Petersburg and Wrangell, particularly in front of the Stikine River, to protect weak king salmon runs.
“The retention of king salmon is prohibited; any king salmon caught must be released immediately,” in District 8 in front of the Stikine and a portion of the Back Channel, from April 1 through July 14.
The same restriction applies April 1 through June 14 in the waters around Wrangell, Kupreanof, Etolin, Zarembo and Mitkof islands, which encompass District 6, District 10 and portions of District 5, District 7 and District 9.
The closure from April 1 through June 14 also applies to waters near Juneau, Haines and Skagway.
Troy Tydingco, state sport fishery manager based in Sitka, said the one-fish limit for nonresidents in 2025 is having a lingering impact his year on the Southeast sportfishing industry that serves primarily nonresident clients.
He said nonresidents may have been deterred from booking charter fishing trips after seeing the one-king nonresident annual limit for all of 2025 and following emergency closures to king salmon retention in recent years.
The harvest by nonresidents has comprised about 75% of Southeast sport harvest in recent years.
For other gear types, the state set the 2026 harvest for Southeast commercial seiners at 8,800 kings; for drift gillnetters, 5,900; and 1,000 for set gillnetters.
This story was originally published by the Daily Sitka Sentinel.
Alaska’s senior U.S. senator, Lisa Murkowski, knows from experience how difficult it is for the state to adopt a long-term fiscal plan, rather than simply hoping for federal dollars and high oil prices to pay the bills.
“Alaska will need a legitimate fiscal plan as the federal budget inevitably tightens,” she told state House and Senate members gathered in a joint session to hear her annual address on March 31.
Congressional Republican-led federal budget cuts are shifting more costs to the states, including Alaska, for food assistance benefits known as SNAP, disaster response and prevention and other services.
Higher oil prices, caused by the war on Iran and Iran’s attacks on Middle East oil and gas facilities, have provided the state with additional revenues this year, but those revenues will fade away when oil returns to lower prices.
“The (oil-price) windfall will only go so far and last so long,” Murkowski told legislators. “We can’t count on anyone or anything to bail us out of our fiscal woes. Only a long-term plan will truly end the cycle of a boom and bust.”
In a later interview with reporters, Murkowski recalled her four years in the Alaska Legislature, before becoming a U.S. senator in December 2002. She was part of the bipartisan Fiscal Policy Caucus, which she joined as a freshman in 1999.
The state had been drawing as much as $1 billion a year out of reserves to balance the budget as low oil prices cut deeply into state revenue. The House-led group of Democrats and Republicans was determined to put together a fiscal plan to help pay for public services for years into the future.
Though the group debated multiple revenue bills and pieces of a fiscal plan 1999 through 2002, and succeeded in winning House approval in 2002 of a state income tax and higher taxes on alcohol, the Senate adopted only the alcohol tax increase.
Higher oil prices and more spending from reserves over the years have covered the budget, but the reserves have declined and oil prices are never guaranteed.
Murkowski acknowledged to reporters in an interview session after her address to the Legislature that she was unable to solve the state’s long-term fiscal problem when she was a member of the House.
“We know what the contours of a fiscal plan need to be,” she said. “But political will to make it happen — still waiting 20 years later.”
Legislators and governors have continued talking for the past 20 years about the need for a fiscal plan to provide stable revenues and managed spending but have not been able to assemble the political will or the votes to pass legislation.
The senator told lawmakers she didn’t want to be “lecture-y,” but followed with advice anyway.
“And one of those areas — I’m just going to offer it up here — is matching funds,” she said. Many federal programs, particularly money for highway improvements, require a state match.
This summer’s road construction work in Alaska could be at risk if the Legislature and governor cannot settle their differences over how to pay the state match on federal highway dollars in time for contractors to mobilize for the short construction season.
“When the delegation secures a federal allocation, we really need you to come through with your share in a timely manner,” she said. “We need you to meet the match.”
She also called out the governor for his decision to use federal aid to replace state dollars in the Alaska Marine Highway System operating budget.
The senator succeeded in getting nearly $1 billion in the bipartisan infrastructure law during President Joe Biden’s term that could come to Alaska for new ferries and other one-time spending to pay for improvements.
However, much of that federal aid went to cover the ferry system’s annual operating expenses.
That federal funding is a “lifeline, it’s not an entitlement,” Murkowski said.
“It’s not a good strategy to rely on a temporary, competitive federal grant program to cover 45% of our state’s operating costs, all of which used to be paid for by the state,” she said. “That’s the case that we’re facing right now.”
It’s not all the state’s problem, the senator, now in her 25th year in Congress, acknowledged. “The federal government is often beset by chaos these days.”
“We’re looking at the situation with the Department of Homeland Security being shut down now for 46 days,” she said. “We have seen workers —whether they be TSA, FEMA, some in our Coast Guard — working without paychecks. … But the problem that we’re dealing with here is shutdowns are becoming far too routine and too many policymakers are just becoming numb to their impacts.”
One of the design concepts is essentially a more limited version of the design done by previous dock contractor Turnagain Marine, Moffatt & Nichol project lead Paul Wallis said last month.
Like the Turnagain design, the concept would build a new dock face in front of the existing dock, also known as encapsulation. Unlike the Turnagain design, it proposes a structure far smaller than the existing dock, with the rest of the old section demolished and replaced with rock pile, also known as rip-rap.
The other two concepts would demolish the existing dock and replace it with a new type of structure. One would rebuild a new, flat, dock face, also known as a bulkhead, for barges to tie up to. The other would trade a flat dock face for a loading ramp on a float, allowing barges to unload over rip-rap.
Borough officials will evaluate the concepts according to criteria approved by the assembly last month. Those criteria generally concern cost, functionality, safety, and risk for environmental contamination.
According to the borough’s project schedule, the assembly will select its top choice of the three concepts at an April 28 meeting. From there, Moffatt & Nichol engineers will further refine the concept through June. Wallis told the Ports and Harbors Advisory Committee last month that the refinement will include “looking at some dollars and dates and things like that.”
At the moment, none of the concepts include cost estimates. Wallis has told both the assembly and Ports and Harbors that all the concepts will be feasible within the borough’s total unspent dock funds — roughly $22 million, according to a March 24 memo from borough manager Alekka Fullerton.
The borough and Moffatt & Nichol representatives stressed that the contractor will stop short of designing the structural details of a new dock. Wallis has said that work on the preferred concept will outline the design parameters, including overall shape and functionality requirements.
Then, the concept will go out to bid, and another company will be selected to complete the design and construct the dock.
If all goes according to plan, that design and construction contractor is scheduled to be selected at the end of July.
Wednesday’s meeting will be held at 5:30 p.m. in the Haines Borough Assembly Chambers.
Lisa Parady (left) director of the Alaska Council of School Administrators and Katie Parrot (right) president of the Alaska Association of School Business Officials testify to a joint session of the House and Senate Education Committees on Mar. 30, 2026. (Photo by Corinne Smith/Alaska Beacon)
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 say it would require the state to increase funding by $1,283 to the BSA or $7,983 per student. (Screenshot of presentation by the Alaska Council of School Administrators)
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.
Alaska teacher and principal turnover rates were high across urban and rural and remote districts in 2024, according to data from the the University of Alaska Anchorage Institute of Social and Economic Research. (Screenshot from presentation from the Alaska Council of School Administrators)
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.
Lisa Parady (left) director of the Alaska Council of School Administrators and David Nogg (right) principal of Goldenview Middle School in Anchorage testify to the teacher shortage impacting student performance to a joint session of the House and Senate Education Committees on Mar. 30, 2026. (Photo by Corinne Smith/Alaska Beacon)
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.
Lisa Parady (left) director of the Alaska Council of School Administrators and Jennifer Schmitz (right) director of the Alaska Educator Recruitment and Retention Center testify to a joint session of the House and Senate Education Committees on Mar. 30, 2026. (Photo by Corinne Smith/Alaska Beacon)
“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.
Two brown bear cubs cuddle on a riverbank in Katmai National Park and Preserve while their mother fises for salmon in August 2023. Critics of a state predator-control program aimed at boosting the Mulchatna Caribou Herd say the Department of Fish and Game and Board of Game have failed to show sufficient scientific grounds for what could be more years of bear kills in the region. (Photo by F. Jimenez/National Park Service)
With just a few weeks before a renewed state-managed bear killing program is set to start in Western Alaska, conservation groups are seeking a court order to halt it.
The Alaska Wildlife Alliance and the Center for Biological Diversity filed a motion in state Superior Court on Monday requesting an injunction to bar the Alaska Department of Fish and Game from carrying out its planned Mulchatna predator control program this spring.
The motion stems from a lawsuit filed by the groups in November after the Alaska Board of Game reauthorized a Mulchatna predator control program that had previously been overturned by state court rulings.
The plaintiff groups argue the new Board of Game-authorized program, which is set to run through at least 2028, is no better than the previous program that killed 186 brown bears, five black bears and 20 wolves from 2023 to 2025. State officials have not corrected the flaws that led to court rulings that found the program to violate the state constitution, the plaintiffs argue in their new motion.
“Bears are constitutionally protected. The Alaska Constitution requires the Board to ensure that bear populations targeted by a predator control program are managed sustainably. It has been over a year since this Court held that the Board needed credible scientific evidence documenting brown and black bear populations to comply with the constitutional sustained yield requirement,” the motion said. “The Board still does not have that information, and yet it has once again authorized the Department to kill an unlimited number of brown and black bears within the approximately 40,000 square-mile Mulchatna Control Area in Game Management Units 9B, 17A, 17B, 17C, 18, 19A, and 19B.”
Alaska’s game management units are specific geographic areas designated by the Department of Fish and Game. There are 26 broad units, and some of those are divided into subunits. The areas listed in the plaintiffs’ motion are in Western Alaska.
In an emailed statement, Alaska Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang said the department has received the latest filling and officials “are reviewing it in consultation with our lawyers.”
The Department of Fish and Game argues that bear culling is necessary to help the ailing Mulchatna caribou herd, which has diminished from a peak of about 200,000 in 1997 to about 12,000 in 2019, according to the department. Hunting of Mulchatna caribou has been closed since 2021.
The department’s goal is to return the herd to a size of 30,000 to 80,000 animals. Its contested predator control program was conducted in the late spring and early summer because that is the season when calves are born and, according to department officials, vulnerable to bear predation; this year’s program is likewise set to start in that season.
Department officials have said the predator removals have already helped the caribou herd, which was estimated at about 16,000 animals last year.
But critics of the program say that scientific justification for the predator control program is lacking. They cite factors other than bear predation, including a change in habitat that has made the terrain less favorable to caribou but more favorable to moose, as likely causes of the herd’s decline. They also say the program puts important bear populations at risk, notably the brown bears of Katmai National Park and Preserve.
“I really want to see the Mulchatna caribou herd grow and thrive, but this unscientific and cruel approach of killing every bear in sight across southwest Alaska can’t be the way forward,” Cooper Freeman, Alaska director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “Alaska needs to stop wasting public resources and make wildlife management decisions firmly rooted in science and sustainability.”
Reopening of a federal grant program could reduce, but not eliminate, a cash squeeze at the Alaska Marine Highway System this summer.
The months-long delay in the program jeopardized the ferry system’s operating budget for this summer. But, even with the reopening of the grant applications, the Marine Highway will need state funds to cover for the missing federal funds until the anticipated grant comes through.
Fear of a shutdown arose earlier this year after Alaska Department of Transportation officials said the ferry system was $77.9 million short of its budgeted needs for 2026 because of the delayed federal funds, which represented nearly half the Marine Highway’s annual operating budget.
Based on prior years, applications for 2026 federal ferry grants were expected to open mid-2025. But 2025 came and went, and no application period ever opened.
That left the ferry system with only enough money to operate through July, Department of Transportation budget manager Dom Pannone told state lawmakers this spring.
Though the state had not yet applied for the funding when the budget was written last year, it had an expectation of receiving funds based on the structure of the federal grant program and the fact that it had received the aid the previous three years.
Marine Highway reliance on federal funding has been the norm since the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act created a billion-dollar pot of rural ferry funding — widely credited to Sen. Lisa Murkowski. When the bill was passed, Congress appropriated money to fund the grant program through the 2026 fiscal year.
The vast majority of the millions released so far have gone to Alaska ferries, including roughly $150 million in operating funds, day-to-day costs like paying staff and keeping ferries fueled.
With no way to apply for the funds, and no public explanation from the federal government on why the application process had stopped, state transportation officials seemed to have few ideas for how to cope.
At a March legislative hearing, state senator Löki Tobin asked if the department had done any contingency planning. Pannone said the ferry system could offload the out-of-service M/V Matanuska, but otherwise offered few specifics: the department would “continue to work with the legislature on resolving (the funding gap),” he said, adding that they would pursue those discussions “before we’d consider reducing the schedule or canceling any sailings.”
At that hearing, Pannone also delivered hopeful news, saying federal officials at the Federal Transit Administration had “committed” to beginning the grant application process by the end of March.
Funding was then expected to be awarded in August or September, Pannone said.
As of this week, the federal government delivered on the first half of that commitment. On Monday, the Federal Transportation Administration announced backdated funding for the 2025 fiscal year and funding for the current 2026 fiscal year. The state will still have to apply for the funds, and until then won’t know how large its share will be. But the size of the total funding pot is comparable to, even slightly larger, than past years.
Even with the good news for the ferry system, issues still remain.
For one, the backdated funding, arriving nearly a year later than expected, isn’t expected to be delivered in time for the summer season. The ferry system expects to exhaust existing operating funds in July, and Pannone said last month he expects the federal infusion of cash to only come in August or September.
That would likely require the state to cover an increased share of expenses until then, after which federal funds could essentially pay the state back.
In her annual address to the state Legislature last week, Murkowski criticized the Dunleavy administration, calling the use of the funds on operating costs, rather than long-term investments, a “bad idea.”
“Federal funding is a lifeline, not an entitlement,” Murkowski said.
According to data from the Marine Highway, in the seven years before the Biden-era federal funding infusion, essentially all of the ferry system’s operating funds came from ticket revenue and state funds.
But as federal funding has increased, the governor has cut the state’s share, vetoing over $40 million in state funding to the Marine Highway since 2019.
Now, absent a new stream of federal assistance, the state will have to either increasing spending or make cuts.
Senate Finance Committee chair Bert Stedman told transportation officials in February that tight state budgets were “reducing the flexibility (the Senate Finance Committee) has to backfill some of these holes.”
There’s also a political challenge beyond just the total dollar figure.
Whereas the federal grants can only be spent on ferries, pulling in state general funds would come at the expense of some other program, potentially with a broader geographic reach.
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” Stedman said. “If you use the Marine Highway it’s pretty sensitive, and if you’re an area that doesn’t use it, you’d rather have more potholes fixed.”
Potential new Lynn Canal ferry funded
Monday’s notice of available federal funds also included a large chunk of money that could build a new Lynn Canal ferry, contrary to the expectations of borough decision-makers.
The ferry system’s long-range plan includes two diesel-electric shuttle ferries, which would run frequent, short routes. One of those possible routes is between Haines and Skagway.
If the ferry is indeed constructed and assigned to the Lynn Canal, it would allow larger ferries to run directly between Auke Bay and either Haines or Skagway — likely alternating between the two. Stopping just once in the upper Lynn Canal would cut down on costs and increase sailing frequency, the Marine Highway’s long-range plan says.
Borough decision-makers in recent months have been pessimistic about the project, citing the Trump Administration’s slashing of renewable energy projects.
Assembly members Eben Sargent and Gabe Thomas said at an assembly meeting this winter that they thought funding for the hybrid ferry would be a casualty of those cuts.
“Electric stuff is not going anywhere right now,” Thomas said at a meeting in January.
In the Legislature, at least one lawmaker raised a similar concern at one of the Marine Highway hearings: Senate Finance member James Kaufman, an Anchorage Republican, asked Department of Transportation officials if the hybrid boats were linked to an “environmental agenda” that could cause “unstable funding” going forward.
The answer was largely no, from DOT Deputy Commissioner Katherine Keith, who said the new propulsion system had benefits outside of emissions reductions, including “significant operational savings.”
Keith also said that diesel-propulsion ferries were “outdated internationally.”
Despite concerns from assembly members and state lawmakers, Monday’s announcement continues Biden-era funding for the program. The program is expected to make $98 million available nationwide for low and no-emission ferry programs over two years.
That could help complete funding for the project, which received a $46 million grant from the program in 2022. The Marine Highway currently estimates the shuttle ferries to cost $59 million each.
Design of the hybrid ferries is nearing completion, and construction on one is planned to go out to bid at the end of the year, Marine Highway director Craig Tornga said last month. Construction of the boat is estimated to take another two and a half years, according to the Marine Highway long-range plan.
Lisa Parady (left) director of the Alaska Council of School Administrators and Katie Parrot (right) president of the Alaska Association of School Business Officials testify to a joint session of the House and Senate Education Committees on Mar. 30, 2026. (Photo by Corinne Smith/Alaska Beacon)
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 say it would require the state to increase funding by $1,283 to the BSA or $7,983 per student. (Screenshot of presentation by the Alaska Council of School Administrators)
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.
Alaska teacher and principal turnover rates were high across urban and rural and remote districts in 2024, according to data from the the University of Alaska Anchorage Institute of Social and Economic Research. (Screenshot from presentation from the Alaska Council of School Administrators)
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.
Lisa Parady (left) director of the Alaska Council of School Administrators and David Nogg (right) principal of Goldenview Middle School in Anchorage testify to the teacher shortage impacting student performance to a joint session of the House and Senate Education Committees on Mar. 30, 2026. (Photo by Corinne Smith/Alaska Beacon)
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.
Lisa Parady (left) director of the Alaska Council of School Administrators and Jennifer Schmitz (right) director of the Alaska Educator Recruitment and Retention Center testify to a joint session of the House and Senate Education Committees on Mar. 30, 2026. (Photo by Corinne Smith/Alaska Beacon)
“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.
Alaska superintendents surveyed responded to the question “what keeps you up at night,” shared by the Alaska Council of School Administrators with lawmakers on Mar. 30, 2026. (Screenshot from presentation)
A male spectacled eider with its mouth agape is seen feeding on a tundra pond at Utqiagvik on June 16, 2019 at Utqiagvik. Spectacled eiders are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Native and environmental groups say bottom trawling in the northern Bering Sea could harm the population. (Photo by Peter Pearsall/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)
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.”
Getting listed
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.
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.
– Daniel Rohlf, law professor and director of the Earthwise Law Center at Lewis & Clark University
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.
Oregon Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Julia Shumway for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com.
