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Stikine Middle School Honor Roll: Sixth grade: Madison Blackburn, Karri Buness, Michael Buness, Kaylyn Easterly, Laura Helgeson, Adriana Larrabee, Tasha Massin, Trevor Miller, Lillian O’Brien, Hank Voltz, Hunter Weiderspohn. Seventh grade: Riley Blatchley, Helen Decker, Kellan Eagle, Abigail Gerald, Jean-Luc Lewis, Issacc Mingming, Dillon Rooney. Eighth grade: Jonathan Barratt, Anna Dow, Erin Galla, Kayla Hay, Zachary Lane, Kiara Meissner, Hannah Miethe, Racquel Mingming, Tymon Teat. Honorable Mention: Sixth grade: Jonah Comstock, Skylar L...
A pair of motions passed during the May 21 school board meeting might seem unrelated. One vote moved Evergreen Elementary school to school-wide Title I funding from the schools previous status as a targeted Title I school. The other move extended kindergarten instruction through the end of the day. Despite their seemingly different aims, both seek to address the needs of Evergreen students as early and as flexibly as possible, according to superintendent Rich Rhodes. “It gives us more time with kids,” he said. “That’s one of the biggest...
Teachers and school board members gathered at the Elks Lodge May 22 to honor four retiring teachers, an administrator, and a middle school secretary. While the retirement banquet punctuates the end of an accumulated century of teaching experience, many of the schools personnel honored, like 30-year veteran teacher Dan Roope, said reality hadn't yet – and wouldn't yet – set in. "It doesn't seem real right now," he said. "One of the nice things about teaching is that you get to go to some oth...
Students and teachers feted Bob Davis's Teacher of Excellence Award Friday with pizza, a short break from classes at the end of the day, and an error-riddled sign. The errors were intentional, a loving tweak of pet-peeve grammatical errors Davis has reminded students about countless times over his years as a middle school English teacher. "They're the ones I would harp at," he said, chuckling. Davis is in his 20th year as a teacher at Stikine. Teaching emerged as a career path after a long time...
If you wanted an answer to an unexpected question, Thursday was a great time to be at Stikine Middle School. Among the questions posed (and answers attempted) at the annual sixth grade science fair were: which brand of hair tie can hold the most weight? Which type of bait do squirrels and juncos prefer? Does listening to up-tempo music increase your blood pressure? Which school has the most bacteria? Students have worked on the questions, and the experiments and accompanying displays, since Febr...
Future Wrangell schools secondary principal Colter Barnes was in town this weekend to see the community and look for housing. Barnes will replace retiring secondary principal and athletic director Monty Buness Aug. 1. He's currently the traveling principal at Kokhanok and Igiugig schools in the Lake and Peninsula School system. He spent part of the weekend watching the multi-day middle school volleyball tournament at the high school. "Cause it's always sunny here, right?" he quipped, when asked...
Stikine Middle School Honor Roll: Sixth grade: Madison Blackburn, Karri Buness, Kaylyn Easterly, Tasha Massin, Trevor Miller, Lillian O’Brien, Kody Paul, Hank Voltz, Hunter Wiederspohn. Seventh grade: Helen Decker, Kellan Eagle, Abigail Gerald. Eighth grade: Jonathan Barratt, Erin Galla, Caleb Groshong, Kayla Hay, Kiara Meissner, Racquel Mingming, Tymon Teat. Honorable Mention: Sixth grade: Michael Buness, Madison Harding, Laura Helgeson, Adriana Larrabee, Ryan Soeteber. Seventh grade: Riley Blatchley, Elizabeth Johnson, Issacc Mingmin, D...
For an eighth grade student, Kayla Hay chooses her words very carefully. "In Mr. Davis's class we're all assigned certain writing ..." she said, and paused, searching for a synonym to describe work in her favorite class. "Assignments," she finished. "Is that how I should say that?" Her penchant for just the right word recently won her second place among sixth through eighth grade students in the Carl Sandburg Student Poetry Contest put on the by the National Park Service. Unable to attend the aw...
One day earlier in the school year, a mother said her unidentified Evergreen Elementary School student came home with a concussion, a bloody nose, a split lip, and a sprained ankle. He had been bullied by older students off school grounds, he told his mother. His assailants had repeatedly banged his head against the ground, causing the concussion, she said. The student and his mother went to the hospital, where he was briefly treated, and then released, his mother said. Middle school students may have been involved (that later turned out not...
Middle and high school students may find themselves facing a new slate of language arts classes when fall rolls around. The changes are planned ahead of revisions to the Alaska state educational standards planned for the 2015-16 school year, school officials say. They’re also planned to take advantage of consistently improving language arts abilities among incoming sixth-graders, said Bob Davis, a language arts teacher at Stikine Middle School. The majority of changes will take place in the middle school, Davis said. “It’s partly” standar...
School board members and officials reviewed a second draft of the 2015 budget at Monday night's regular school board meeting. The second draft cuts projected shortfalls by $192,168, or almost 88 percent. A first-draft version of the budget circulated among city officials, board members, and the public had projected a $219,461 gap between revenue and spending. The second draft circulated Monday night shows a gap of only $27,293. Officials expect additional drafts as the school system revises figu...
The school board presented the annual Report Card to the Public at a public hearing before the Jan. 20 school board. The document compiles testing results for the entire school system, as well as individual testing results for the component schools, down to the level of individual grades. Preliminary results showing a five-star rating for Stikine Middle School – the only traditionally structured middle school in the state to achieve the Department of Education’s highest five-star ranking – were released over the summer. The Report Card to th...
The Chief Shakes House rededication was easily the biggest event of 2013 in Wrangell. However, the year was filled with events and news stories big and small. On the first edition of 2014, the Sentinel pauses to recollect the stories throughout the year. January An electrical fire damaged the fish tank at the Nolan Center, causing it to be removed. A 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck off of Craig Jan. 4, rattling windows and nerves in town. The quake caused no major damage in town, but...
Two concerts and an art auction showcased the talents of local youth this week. Student musicians from Stikine Middle School and Wrangell High School participated in the joint high school and middle school concert Dec. 11 in the high school commons. Elementary school students sang and performed at the elementary school concert Dec. 12 in the elementary school gym. The older students' concert also included – for the first time ever – an auction of dozens of objets d'art produced by students and...
When bachelor science teacher Monty Buness started working at Stikine Middle School in the fall of 1989, a British scientist had just invented the world wide web, but it wouldn't be widely available for four more years. When the former Alaska Principal of the Year – now happily married to former library aide Linda Buness – retires at the end of the 2013-14 school year, every student in the high school will have his or her own laptop computer, and likely own a cell phone or other mobile dev...
While major improvements to the flagship website of healthcare reform have been made, parts of the reform law remain a work in progress, a representative of the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium said. The troubled healthcare.gov website has started to show signs of improved functionality, said Monique Martin, the consortium’s representative. Martin visited Wrangell Tuesday to discuss problems and remaining issues with the site. She spent most of the day Tuesday consulting with local healthcare consumers worried about the laws effects, a...
The Middle School basketball team concluded its six-week season in mid-November with a win at the Stikine Invitational in Craig. The invitational features teams from all over Southeast, and is held in Petersburg, Craig and Wrangell on a rotating basis. The Wolves this year featured two teams, an A team and a B team, and the B Wolves team seized the championship on the back of a single-point win over Craig to close out the tournament, said coach Dustin Johnson. "We went back and forth," he said....
Stikine Middle School: Honor Roll: Sixth grade: Madison Blackburn, Karri Buness, Kaylyn Easterly, Laura Helgeson, Adriana Larrabee, Skyler Lofftus, Tasha Massin, Trevor Miller, Lillian O’Brien, Kody Paul, Hank Voltz, Hunter Wiederspohn. Seventh grade: Riley Blatchley, Helen Decker, Kellan Eagle, Abigail Gerald, Cori Johnson, Elizabeth Johnson, Issacc Mingming, Dillon Rooney. Eighth grade: Jonathan Barratt, Caleb Groshong, Kayla Hay, Kiara Meissner, Racquel Mingming, Tymon Teat, Devin Till, Samantha Townsend. Honorable Mention: Sixth grade: M...
Stikine Middle School seventh graders buzzed around Shoemaker Shelter lighting fires one afternoon last week. Instead of committing a spree of wanton teenage vandalism, students were learning skills essential to life in Southeast. One by one, they took turns starting a fire using a nine-volt battery and steel wool as well as flint and steel to light cotton balls smeared with Vaseline – all under careful supervision and in designated fire areas. They also practiced building shelters from n...
Wrangell High School opened a new salad bar for lunch Oct. 23 in the student commons. The salad bar has been in the works for several months at the cafeteria after the school received a grant for the salad bar at the end of last year, and opens after last month's numbers from the food services program showed a steep decline between the number of lunches eaten this year and the number of lunches eaten at the same time last year. Most students said they enjoyed school lunches in general, even if t...
To the Editor: I propose that the extra $200,000.00 that the borough of Wrangell gives annually to the local school district is suspended, if the school performs in an unbusiness, unprofessional manner. Namely if the school district creates corporate malfeasance, by partaking in corporate welfare. Specifically if the school hires any business to perform their duties of feeding our children. There is no way that any corporation can prepare quality hot meals two times a day one hundred and eighty days a year, without a profit. The true nature of...
When Zak's Café owner James George started to get sick, he knew the cause. Since doctors diagnosed him with diverticulitis in 2005, he'd gone a few rounds with the chronic digestive condition. "After you've had it for a while, you can tell if it's flaring up," he said. The uninsured restaurateur went to the emergency room at Wrangell Medical Center in the last week of August. Doctors then sent him to Ketchikan Medical Center to stabilize him and perform surgery. Instead of surgery, doctors in Ke...
School lunches were the main topic of conversation at the Oct. 9 school board meeting. Documents provided by the school meals program show the school provided 2,623 meals in September, down 1,182 meals from the same month last year. The figure represents a decrease of 31 percent. District figures show students ate 443 fewer breakfasts this year than last year, and 739 fewer lunches. The decline in meals is also attributable in part to declining enrollment. Fewer students mean fewer lunches and breakfasts. As evidence, they pointed out that the...