Sorted by date Results 76 - 100 of 812
The school district is requesting $1.75 million from the borough for the 2024-2025 school year budget, an increase from the $1.6 million contribution of the past two years. Even with the increase, the budget will draw down more than half of the school district’s reserves to balance revenues with expenses. The uncertainty of any increase in state funding is adding to the budget stress at Wrangell schools and districts across the state. The state funding formula has increased little more than a few dollars in the past seven years. The annual b...
The U.S. Forest Service is adding a dozen new positions in Wrangell, plus changing two jobs from seasonal to permanent. Most of the new hires are on the job, with a couple still in the hiring process. District Ranger Tory Houser estimated it's a 15% to 20% gain in staff. "Many of the positions are recreation positions," she said. "In our case, the influx is more a management decision to transition from having seasonal, temporary employees to having permanent employees that work a seasonal...
An Anchorage Superior Court judge has struck down an Alaska law that allows the state to allocate cash payments to parents of homeschooled students, ruling that it violates constitutional prohibitions against spending state money on religious or private education. “This court finds that there is no workable way to construe the statutes to allow only constitutional spending,” wrote Judge Adolf Zeman, concluding that the entire law must be struck down. The April 12 decision has major and immediate implications for the more than 22,000 students en...
The Alaska House has sent to the Senate a state operating budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1 with an almost $2,300 Permanent Fund dividend that would be the single largest expenditure in the spending plan. The budget also includes $175 million in additional one-time school funding, raising the total state contribution to school district operating expenses to just over half of what House members voted to spend on this fall’s dividend. The boost in state aid for the 2024-2025 school year, if approved by the Senate and signed into l...
Hundreds of high schoolers across Alaska participated in an organized walkout April 4 in protest of the Legislature’s recent failure to override Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s veto of an education funding bill. The bill would have included a historic increase in state money for public education. Outside Eagle River High School in the Anchorage School District, more than 100 students stood outside in the blustering snow for nearly a whole class period chanting “Fund our education!” and “Save our arts, save our sports!” Similar protests — all organized...
Kevin McCallister is the new facilities and maintenance director for the school district. He arrived with his family on March 25 and started work April 1. Outgoing maintenance director Josh Blatchley will stay on until the end of April to help with training his replacement. While McCallister is just getting started, he hasn't "really dug into the meat and potatoes of everything yet." He's already been made aware of some of the larger projects coming over the next few years, such as the...
HELP WANTED Join our team as Americans for Prosperity--Alaska Grassroots Associates working part-time for freedom, opportunity and prosperity in Wrangell. Engage with fellow Alaskans by conducting door-to-door canvassing ---- no sales. Minimum 20 hours up to 30 hours per week at $24.50 per hour. Text your name to 907-318-7172 to receive a link to the online application form. HELP WANTED Wrangell Public Schools is accepting applications for the 2024-2025 school year: K-12 School Counselor. The counselor is responsible for data collection...
An experienced Fairbanks educator who has dreamed of moving to Southeast for years will finally achieve his goal when he starts work in August as the new secondary school principal in Wrangell. Greg Clark will be the new principal for the high school and middle school. He was among 16 applicants and chosen from three finalists. The school board approved the contract and Schools Superintendent Bill Burr hired Clark on March 18. He will replace Jackie Hanson, who is leaving at the end of the...
April 3, 1924 Joe Mahoney and Dick Nuckols killed a huge gray wolf at Smuggler’s Cove recently just as the animal was about to attack Mahoney. They had been at the Helm Bay Mining Company’s property and while on their way to town were forced to stop at Smuggler’s Cove on account of a storm. While out on the beach after a mess of clams, Nuckols saw a gray wolf sneaking up back of Mahoney with murder in his eye. Having his gun by his side, Nuckols immediately grabbed it and fired, hitting the wolf in the foreleg. This attracted the attention of M...
The 6-month-old Wrangell Athletic Club has raised more than $10,000 toward its mission of paying for student travel to state competition, with plans to raise a lot more. Meanwhile, the school district has advanced more than $40,000 for student travel to state competition in the 2023-2024 school year. The school board last year appropriated $46,000 to cover a deficit in the travel account for the 2022-2023 school year, with the cautionary advice that it did not plan to repeat the spending this year — and would look to the new fundraising g...
The district’s electric school bus, originally scheduled to arrive in late spring through the federal Clean School Bus program, has been delayed until March 2025 due to a backlog of orders at the bus manufacturer, which could be too late for the terms of the grant’s fall deadline. Schools Superintendent Bill Burr explained the reasons for the delay at a school board meeting on March 18. The delay could pose a problem, as the grant deadline requires the bus to be on the job by October. Burr doesn’t know yet whether the grant can be salvaged. “We...
Almost half of the students enrolled at the school district are counted as Alaska Native. Schools Superintendent Bill Burr confirmed that out of a total of 270 students enrolled in the district, 122 are registered as Alaska Native, while 13 are American Indian. “We’re 50% or really close,” he said. “Some of those might be mixed, depending on which parent filled it out.” Burr added that while Kim Powell, the district’s administrative assistant, had told him that the ratio has always been around that percentage, statistics from the state and f...
Alaska lawmakers fell one vote short Monday in an attempt to override the governor’s veto of a comprehensive school funding bill, which included a permanent increase in the state funding formula for K-12 education and which could have provided an additional $440,000 for the Wrangell school district. The additional funds would have covered about two-thirds of the deficit in the Wrangell district’s draft budget, reducing the amount of money it will need to pull out of reserves for the 2024-2025 school year. The vote in a joint session of the Hous...
Ann Hilburn is leaving her job as elementary school principal in Wrangell at the end of the school year when she will move to Tok in Alaska’s Interior to serve as special education director. This was Hilburn’s second year as principal after serving a year as special education teacher at the high school and middle school. The new job with the Alaska Gateway School District in Tok “will provide the opportunity to combine what I enjoy most, serving in special education, with the administrative piece of my educational tenure,” she said in an emai...
In addition to his duties as activities director, Mike Hoyt will now also serve as the new Indian Education Act director for the school district after the resignation of DaNika Smalley on Feb. 29. Schools Superintendent Bill Burr confirmed that Hoyt started on March 11. Working in cultural education has been Hoyt’s focus since 2011. He worked as a teacher in Nome for five years, and before that worked at culture camps operated by Goldbelt and Sealaska Heritage Institute in Juneau. “He’s got background in writing grants,” Burr said. “And he...
South Anchorage high school teacher Logan Pitney said his colleagues are making exit strategies to flee their bad financial prospects in Alaska. He called Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s teacher retention bonus plan a “Band-Aid on an arterial bleed.” Juneau Superintendent Franks Hauser called the governor’s charter school policy change proposal a “statewide solution without a statewide problem.” They were among dozens of teachers and school administrators who rejected Dunleavy’s education policy proposals at recent legislative hearings in Juneau. There’s...
HELP WANTED Tourism Coordinator at Wrangell Cooperative Association. Complete job description and applications are available at 1002 Zimovia Highway, by emailing receptionist.wca@gmail.com, or at www.wcatribe.org. Contact Esther Ashton at 907-874-4304 with any questions. Open until filled. First review date: March 22. HELP WANTED Wrangell Public Schools is accepting applications for the following position: Elementary School Principal for the 2024-2025 school year. The principal will provide leadership to ensure high standards are met and...
After filling the job in the past in a temporary capacity, Tory Houser officially accepted the position as U.S. Forest Service Wrangell District ranger on March 4. "It feels great, and a lot of responsibility," she said. Houser has spent 21 years with the Forest Service, including eight years in Wrangell, mostly as recreation officer, although she has filled in before from time to time as acting district ranger. She said that while those previous experiences prepared her in some ways, "I'll need...
HELP WANTED Tourism Coordinator at Wrangell Cooperative Association. Complete job description and applications are available at 1002 Zimovia Highway, by emailing receptionist.wca@gmail.com, or at www.wcatribe.org. Contact Esther Ashton at 907-874-4304 with any questions. Open until filled. First review date: March 22. HELP WANTED Wrangell Public Schools is accepting applications for a Paraprofessional. This is a part-time, 9-month position working with students in the Early Childhood Special Education Program at Evergreen Elementary School. A...
The Wrangell school district is proposing to draw down about half of its reserves to balance the upcoming year’s budget, and Schools Superintendent Bill Burr warns that the solution is not sustainable for the long term. The school board at its Feb. 26 meeting reviewed with district business manager Kristy Andrew the first draft of the budget for the 2024-2025 school year. The budget shows general fund revenues of approximately $5.2 million — of which about 60% is from the state foundation funding formula — and expenses of more than $5.8 milli...
The state, which administers the federally funded Community Development Block Grant program, has awarded Wrangell $695,000 toward a new roof at the middle school. The borough assembly designated the school roof — most of which is almost 30 years old — as its top priority for the grant program this year. The project is estimated at about $1.4 million. “We would have to provide the balance to make it a whole project,” Amber Al-Haddad, the borough’s capital facilities director, said Feb. 28. “It’s possible we can get the (middle school) roof done...
As Ken Hoyt prepares for the Tlingit canoe paddle making workshop at the high school shop room Friday through Sunday, March 8-10, he explained how there are two different types, depending on its intended use. "Real canoe paddles ... never have relief carving," he said. "They don't have inlays. They don't have anything ornate. They're utilitarian. People will sometimes be disappointed when they see old canoe paddles have a lot of geometric designs, straight lines, way different from the...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued an ultimatum to state legislators on Tuesday, saying he will veto a multipart education funding bill unless lawmakers pass separate legislation that contains his education priorities. Speaking from his office in Anchorage, the governor said lawmakers have two weeks to reconsider his proposals for the state to fund teacher bonuses and also set up a path through the state for new charter schools to bypass the local approval process, two items that were voted down during legislative debates over the education bill. If...
Borough officials are concerned that Wrangell continues to lose population, while those who stay in town grow older and leave the workforce. As a whole, the state has lost more residents than it has gained in new arrivals every year since 2013, with only the birth rate keeping Alaska from showing a population decline. However, unlike the statewide totals, Wrangell recorded more deaths than births between 2017 and 2022, adding to the community’s overall population decline. The state’s latest estimate for Wrangell’s population, as of last summe...
